ill. The denial of the possibility of knowing the ends of things is

inconsistent with the assertion that things might have been constituted and arranged in a happier and more advantageous manner.

Organic nature has been still more severely criticised than the inorganic world. There have been pointed out a few fully developed organs, as, for example, the spleen, of which the uses are unknown, and a multitude of organs so imperfectly developed as to be incapable of performing any serviceable functions. Even the most elaborate organisms have been maintained to have essential defects; thus the eye has been argued by Helmholtz to be not a perfect optical instrument, and on the strength of the proof one writer at least has declared that if a human optician were to blunder as badly as the supposed author of eyes must have done, he would be hissed out of his trade. Stress has been laid on the fact that abortions and monsters are not rare. Many seemingly intelligent contrivances, we are reminded, serve mainly to inflict pain and destruction. And the inference has been drawn that the first cause of organic existences was not Divine Wisdom but mere matter and blind force.

The considerations which have already been brought forward should enable us to answer all reasonings of this kind. An organ is not to be pronounced useless because its uses have not yet been discovered. To the extent that evolutionism is true, rudimentary and obsolete organs are accounted for, and the wisdom displayed in them amply vindicated; and if evolutionism be not true, they can still be explained on the theory of types. They are stages in the realisation of the Divine conception; indications of an order which comprehends and conditions the law of use and contrivance for use; keys to the understanding of the Divine plan. Theism cannot have much to fear from the fact that all human eyes are limited in their range and finite in their perfections, or even from the fact that a great many persons have very bad eyesight. Whatever may be its imperfections, the eye, if viewed with a comprehensive regard to its manifold uses and possibilities, must be admitted by every unprejudiced judge to be incomparably superior to every other optical instrument: indeed it is the only real optical instrument; all so-called optical instruments are merely aids and supplements to it. If the eye had been absolutely perfect, its modification or evolution could only have been deterioration, artificial optical instruments would not have been needed, and all man's relations to creation must have been essentially different from what they are. Who can rationally assure us that this was to be desired? Abortions and monsters are at least exceptions. If mind were not what is ultimate in the universe--if nature worked blindly--if there were any truth in what Lange and Huxley have said of her procedure, that it is "like shooting a million or more loaded guns in a field to kill one hare,"--this could not be the case; the bullets which miss would then be incalculably more numerous than those which hit, and the evidence of her failures ought to be strewn far more thickly around us than the remains of her successes; there would be, as it were, no course of nature because of the multitude of deviations, no rule in nature because of the multitude of exceptions. But what are the facts? These: the lowest organisms are as perfectly adapted to their circumstances as the highest, the earliest as the latest; there is a vast amount of death and a vast amount of life in the world, but, whatever some men may thoughtlessly assert, no man can show that there is too much of either, any real waste, if the wants of creation as a whole are to be provided for; abortions and monsters, which are the only things in nature which can be plausibly characterised as "failures," as "bullets which have fallen wide of the mark," are comparatively few and far between; and the monsters, even, are not really exceptions to law and order, are not strictly monsters. The labours of teratologists have scientifically established the grand general result that there are no monsters in nature in the sense which Empedocles imagined; none except in the sense in which a man who gets his leg broken is a monster. A monster is simply a being to whom an accident not fatal has happened in the womb. Why should an accident not occur there as well as elsewhere? Why should God not act by general laws there as well as elsewhere? Who is entitled to say that any result of His general laws is a failure; that any so-called accident was not included in His plan; that a world in which a child could not be born deformed nor a grown man have a leg broken, would be, were all things taken into account, as good as the world in which we actually live? Huxley, Lange, and those whom they represent, have failed to show us any of nature's "bullets which have missed the mark," and have not sufficiently, I think, realised how imperfect might be their own perception of nature's target. The contrivances for the infliction of pain and death displayed in the structure of animals of prey are none the less evidences of intelligence because they are not also, at least immediately or directly, evidences of beneficence. Intelligence is one thing, benevolence is another, and what conclusively disproved benevolence might conclusively prove intelligence.[44]

[44] See Appendix XXXIII.

II.

Let us pass on to the contemplation of greater difficulties; to suffering, which seems to conflict with the benevolence of God--and to sin, which seems irreconcilable with His righteousness.

I cannot agree with those who think that there is no mystery in mere pain; that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil, and involves no separate problem. The history of suffering began on our planet long before that of sin; ages prior to the appearance of man, earth was a scene of war and mutual destruction; hunger and fear, violence and agony, disease and death, have prevailed throughout the air, the land, and ocean, ever since they were tenanted. And what connection in reason can there be between the sin of men or the sin of angels and the suffering endured or inflicted by primeval saurians? The suffering of the animals is, in fact, more mysterious than the suffering of man, just because so little of the former and so much of the latter can be traced, directly or indirectly, to sin. But every animal is made subject to suffering; every animal appetite springs out of a want; every sense and every faculty of every animal are so constituted as to be in certain circumstances sources of pain; hosts of animals are so constructed that they can only live by rending and devouring other animals; no large animal can move without crushing and killing numbers of minute yet sentient creatures. How can all this be under the government of Infinite Goodness?

The human mind may very probably be unable fully to answer this question. It can only hope truthfully to answer it even in a measure by studying the relevant facts, the actual effects and natural tendencies of suffering; general speculations are not likely to profit it much. Now, among the relevant facts, one of the most manifest is that pain serves to warn animals against what would injure or destroy them. It has a preservative use. Were animals unsusceptible of pain, they would be in continual peril. Bayle has ingeniously devised some hypotheses with a view to show that pain might have safely been dispensed with in the animal constitution, but they are obviously insufficient. It would be rash to affirm that pain is indispensable as a warning against danger, but certainly no one has shown how it could be dispensed with, or even plausibly imagined how it might be dispensed with. For anything we can see or even conceive, animal organisms could only be preserved in a world like ours by being endowed with a susceptibility to pain. For anything we know or can even imagine, the demand that there should be no pain is implicitly a demand that there should be no animal life and no world like the earth;--a most foolish and presumptuous demand. But however this may be, pain has, as a fact, plain reference to the prevention of physical injury. "Painful sensations," says Professor Le Conte, "are only watchful vedettes upon the outposts of our organism to warn us of approaching danger. Without these, the citadel of our life would be quickly surprised and taken." Now, to the whole extent that what has just been said is true, pain is not evil but good, and justifies both itself and its author. It is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and its end is a benevolent one. The character of pain itself is such as to indicate that its author must be a benevolent being,--one who does not afflict for his own pleasure, but for his creatures' profit.

Another fact makes this still more evident. Pain is a stimulus to exertion, and it is only through exertion that the faculties are disciplined and developed. Every appetite originates in the experience of a want, and the experience of a want is a pain; but what would the animals be without their appetites and the activities to which these give rise? Would they be the magnificent and beautiful creatures so many of them are? If the hare had no fear, would it be as swift as it is? If the lion had no hunger, would it be as strong as it is? If man had nothing to struggle with, would he be as enterprising, as ingenious, as variously skilled and educated as he is? Pain tends to the perfection of the animals. It has, that is to say, a good end; an end which justifies its use; one which would do so even if perfection should not be conducive to happiness. Perfection, it seems to me, is a worthy aim in itself, and the pain which naturally tends to it is no real evil, and needs no apology. I fail to see that the nearest approximation to the ideal of animal life is the existence of a well-fed hog, which does not need to exert itself, and is not designed for the slaughter. Whatever pain is needed to make the animals so exercise their faculties as to improve and develop their natures, has been wisely and rightly allotted to them. We assign a low aim to Providence when we affirm that it looks merely to the happiness even of the animals. It would be no disproof of benevolence in the Creator if pain in the creatures tended simply to perfection and not to happiness; while it must be regarded as a proof of His benevolence if the means which lead to perfection lead also to happiness. And this they do. The pain which gives rise to exertion and the pain which is involved in exertion are, as a rule, amply rewarded even with pleasure. Perhaps susceptibility to pain is a necessary condition of susceptibility to pleasure; perhaps the bodily organism could not be capable of pleasure and insensible to pain; but whether this be the case or not, it is a plain and certain matter of fact that the activities which pain originates are the chief sources of enjoyment throughout the animal creation. This fact entitles us to hold that pain itself is an evidence of the benevolence of God. The perfecting power of suffering is seen in its highest form not in the brute, but in man; not in its effects on the body, but in its influence on the mind. It is of incalculable use in correcting and disciplining the spirit. It serves to soften the hard of heart, to subdue the proud, to produce fortitude and patience, to expand the sympathies, to exercise the religious affections, to refine, strengthen, and elevate the entire disposition. To come out pure gold, the character must pass through the furnace of affliction. And no one who has borne suffering aright has ever complained that he had been called on to endure too much of it. On the contrary, all the noblest of our race have learned from experience to count suffering not an evil but a privilege, and to rejoice in it as working out in them, through its purifying and perfecting power, an eternal weight of glory.

In the measure that the theory of evolution can be established, the wisdom and benevolence displayed in pain would seem to receive confirmation. So far as that theory can be proved, want, the struggle for existence, the sufferings which flow from it, and death itself, must, it would appear, be regarded as means to the formation, improvement, and adornment of species and races. The afflictions which befall individuals will in this case be scientifically demonstrated to have a reference not merely to their own good, but to the welfare of their kind in all future time. The truth that nothing lives or dies to itself would thus receive remarkable verification. But although it should never receive this verification, although a strictly scientific proof of it shall never be forthcoming, there is already sufficient evidence for it of an obvious and unambiguous kind. Every being, and the animated certainly not less than the inanimate, is adjusted, as I have previously had occasion to show, to every other. "All are but parts of one stupendous whole." This is a truth which throws a kindly and cheering light on many an otherwise dark and depressing fact. Turn it even towards death. Can death itself, when seen in the light of it, be denied to be an evidence of benevolence? I think not. The law of animal generation makes necessary the law of animal death, if the largest amount of animal happiness is to be secured. If there had been less death there must have been also less life, and what life there was must have been poorer and meaner. Death is a condition of the prolificness of nature, the multiplicity of species, the succession of generations, the coexistence of the young and the old; and these things, it cannot reasonably be doubted, add immensely to the sum of animal happiness.

Such considerations as have now been indicated are sufficient to show that suffering is a means to ends which only a benevolent Being can be conceived of as designing. They show that pain and death are not what they would have been if a malevolent Being had contrived them; that they are characterised by peculiarities which only love and mercy can explain. We do not need for any practical spiritual purpose to know more than this. An objector may still ask, Could not God have attained all good ends without employing any painful means? He may still confront us with the Epicurean dilemma: "The Deity is either willing to take away all evil, but is not able to do so, in which case He is not omnipotent; or He is able to remove the evil, but is not willing, in which case He is not benevolent; or He is neither willing nor able, which is a denial of the Divine perfections; or He is both able and willing to do away with the evil, and yet it exists." But only superficial and immature minds will attach much weight to questionings and reasonings of this kind. A slight tincture of inductive science will suffice to make any man aware that speculations as to what God can or can not do, as to what the universe might or might not have been, belong to a very different region from investigations into the tendencies of real facts and processes. It would seem as if, with our present faculties, these speculations could lead us to no reliable conclusions. We clearly perceive that pain and death serve many good ends; but we should require a knowledge of God and of the universe far beyond that which we possess, to be able to state, even as an intelligent conjecture, that these evils could be wisely dispensed with, or that there is anything in them in the least inconsistent either with the power or the benevolence of God.[45]

[45] See Appendix XXXIV.

A large amount of human suffering is accounted for by its connection with human sin. Whatever so-called physical evil is needed to prevent moral evil, or to punish it, or to cure it, or to discipline in moral good, is not really evil. Any earthly suffering which saves us from sin is to be classed among benefits. There is nothing to perplex either mind or heart in the circumstance that sin causes a profound and widespread unhappiness. It is strange that it should sometimes apparently produce so little misery; only a dull conscience, I think, will be surprised that it produces so much. It is merely in so far as physical evil is dissociated from moral evil that its existence is a problem and a perplexity. But the very existence of moral evil is a most painful mystery. The absence of physical evil while moral evil was present would be inconsistent with a moral government of the world; whereas if moral evil were removed no real difficulty would be left. Physical evil may be a relative good, which God can easily be conceived of as causing and approving; moral evil is an unconditional evil, and cannot be the work of any morally perfect being.

Have we any reason, however, to suppose that sin is willed by God in the sense either of being caused or approved by Him? All the sin we know of on earth is willed by man, and all the sin which Scripture tells us of as existing elsewhere is said to be willed by evil spirits; neither nature nor Scripture informs us that there is any moral evil willed by God. In other words, there are no facts which refer us to God as the author of evil. In the absence of facts, we can, it is true, form conjectures, and give expression to them in such questions as, How could God make beings capable of sinning? Why did He not prevent them sinning? Wherefore has He permitted sin to endure so long and spread so widely? But thoughtful searchers for truth, at least after a certain age, cannot feel much interested in, or much perplexed by, questions like these. They will be quite willing to leave the discussion of them to debating societies. They will resolutely refuse to assign the same value to conjectures as to facts.

Sin is not God's work. Moral order may exist without moral disorder, but moral disorder can only exist as rebellion against moral order. The very notion of moral evil implies a moral good which it contravenes, and a moral law by which it is condemned. It can never be thought of as other than a something grafted on nature, by which nature is perverted and depraved. It is not natural, but unnatural; not primary and original, but secondary and derivative; not the law, but the violation of the law.

"The primal Will, innately good, hath never Swerved, or from its own perfect self declined."

Between this Will and sin there are ever interposed created wills, which are conscious of their power to choose good or evil, obedience or disobedience to God's law. God bestows on His creatures only good gifts, but one of the best of all these gifts includes in its very nature ability to abuse and pervert itself and all things else. Freewill needs no vindication, for it is the primary and indispensable condition of moral agency. Without it there might be a certain animal goodness, but there could be no true virtue. A virtuous being is one which chooses of its own accord to do what is right. The notion of a moral creature being governed and guided without the concurrence and approval of its own will is a contradiction. If God desired to have moral creatures in His universe He could only have them by endowing them with freewill, which is the power to accept or reject His own will. The determination to create moral beings was a determination to create beings who should be the causes of their own actions, and who might set aside His own law. It was a determination to limit His own will to that extent and in that manner. Hence, when He created moral beings, and these beings, in the free exercise of their power, violated His law, sin entered into the world, but not through His will. It resulted from the exercise of an original good gift which He had bestowed on certain of His creatures, who could abuse that gift, but were not necessitated to abuse it. Their abuse of it was their own action, and the action consisted not in conforming to, but in contravening, God's will. Thus, God's character is not stained by the sins which His creatures have committed.

But, it will be objected, could not God have made moral creatures who would be certain always to choose what is right, always to acquiesce in His own holy will? and if He could do this, why did He not? Why did He create a class of moral creatures whom He could not but foresee to be certain to abuse their power of choice between obedience and disobedience to His law? Well, far be it from me to deny that God could have originated a sinless moral system. If anything I have already said be understood to imply this, it has been completely misunderstood. I have no doubt that God has actually made many moral beings who are certain never to oppose their own wills to His; or that He might, if it had so pleased Him, have created only such angels as were sure to keep their first estate. But if questioned as to why He has not done the latter, I feel no shame in confessing my ignorance. It seems to me that when you have resolved the problem of the origin of moral evil into the question, Why has God not originated a moral universe in which the lowest moral being would be as excellent as the archangels are? you have at once shown it to be speculatively incapable of solution and practically without importance. The question is one which would obviously give rise to another, Why has God not created only moral beings as much superior to the archangels as they are superior to the lowest Australian aborigines? and that to still another of the same kind, and so on _ad infinitum_? But no complete answer can be given to a question which may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end. We have, besides, neither the facts nor the faculties requisite to answer such questions. A merely imaginary universe is one on which we have no data to reason. We who are so incompetent judges of the actual universe, notwithstanding the various opportunities which we possess of studying it, and the special adaptation of our organs and powers to the objects which it presents, can have no right to affirm its inferiority to any universe which we can imagine as possible. The best world, we may be assured, that our fancies can feign, would in reality be far inferior to the world God has made, whatever imperfections we may think we see in it. We ought to be content if we can show that what God has done is wise and right, and not perplex ourselves as to why He has not done an infinity of other things, the propriety of which we cannot possibly estimate aright or as parts of any scheme unlimited in extent and eternal in duration.

Sin, then, is not God's work, and we are unable to prove that He ought to have prevented it. Can we go any farther than this? Yes; we can show that the permission of it has been made subservient to the attainment of certain great ends. Man has the power to choose evil, but God has also the power to overrule it--to cause it, as it were, to contradict itself, to work out its own defeat and disgrace, to promote what it threatens to hinder; and the facts of experience and history show us that this is what He does. There is thus developed in His human creatures a higher kind of virtue than that of mere innocence; a virtue which can only be reached through suffering, and conflict, and conquest. The struggle with moral evil, still more than that with physical disadvantages and intellectual difficulties, tests and exercises the soul, teaches it its weakness and dependence on Divine strength, and elicits and trains its spiritual faculties. Successive battles with vice raise honest combatants to successive stages of virtue. The type of character presented to us in the second Adam is no bare restoration of that which was lost in the first Adam, but one immeasurably superior. The humblest of true Christians now aspires after a far grander moral ideal than that of an untested innocence. Is there not in this fact a vindication of God's wisdom and holiness worth more than volumes of abstract speculation?

Due weight ought also to be given to the circumstance that the system of God's moral government of our race is only in course of development. We can see but a small part of it, for the rest is as yet unevolved. History is not a whole, but the initial or preliminary portion of a process which may be of vast duration, and the sequel of which may be far grander than the past has been. That portion of the process which has been already accomplished, small though it be, indicates the direction which is being taken; it is, on the whole, a progressive movement; a movement bearing humanity towards truth, freedom, and justice. Is it scientific, or in any wise reasonable, to believe that the process will not advance to its legitimate goal? Surely not. The physical history of the earth affords abundant evidence of the realisation of the most comprehensive plans, and no indication of failure. We can have no right to imagine that it will be otherwise in the moral sphere; that the ideals towards which history shows humanity to have been approaching in the past will not be reached even in the most distant future. But if moral progress will, no less than physical progress, be carried on unto completion, the future cannot fail to throw light on the past--cannot fail to some extent to justify the past. The slowness of the progress may perplex us, and yet, perhaps, it is just what we ought to expect, both from God's greatness and our own littleness. He is patient because eternal. His plans stretch from everlasting to everlasting, and a thousand years are in His sight but as yesterday when it is past. We have not the faculties which fit us for rapid movements and vast achievements. We need to be conducted by easy and circuitous courses. "Lofty heights must be ascended by winding paths."

"We have not wings, we cannot soar, But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time."

It must be added that whoever acknowledges Christianity to be a revelation from God, must see in it reasons which go far to explain the permission of sin. There is, it is true, in the authoritative records of the Christian religion, the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, no explanation of the origin of moral evil as a speculative problem. The account of the first parents of the human race introducing sin into the world by yielding to the seduction of a being who had himself sinned, is wholly of a historical character, and can neither be compared nor contrasted with the theories of philosophers as to the nature, possibility, and cause of sin. To measure the one by the others, or to set the one over against the others, is to do injustice both to Scripture and philosophy. But the whole scheme of Christianity must seem to those who accept it the strongest possible of practical grounds for the Divine permission of man's abuse of freewill. The existence of sin has, according to the Christian view, been the occasion and condition of a manifestation of the Divine character far more glorious than that which had been given by the creation of the heavens and the earth. It called forth a display of justice, love, and mercy before which all moral beings in the universe may well bow down in wonder and adoration, and man especially with unspeakable gratitude. If God has really manifested Himself in Christ for the reconciliation of the world to Himself, His permission of sin has certainly to all practical intents been amply justified.

But I must conclude. Let it be in leaving with you the lesson that belief in conscience and belief in God--belief in the moral order of the universe and belief in a moral Governor and Judge--are most intimately connected and mutually support each other. Many of you will remember how Robertson of Brighton,--when describing the crisis of the conflict between doubt and faith in the awful hour in which, as he says, life has lost its meaning, and the grave appears to be the end of all, and the sky above the universe is a dead expanse, black with the void from which God has disappeared,--tells us that he knows but of one way in which a man may come forth from this agony scatheless--namely, by holding fast to those things which are certain still, the grand, simple landmarks of morality. "In the darkest hour," are his words, "through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain,--If there be no God, and no future state, even then, it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be brave than to be a coward. Blessed, beyond all earthly blessedness, is the man who in the tempestuous darkness of the soul has dared to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is he who, when all is drear and cheerless within and without, when his teachers terrify him and his friends shrink from him, has obstinately clung to moral good. Thrice blessed, because his night shall pass into clear bright day." Now there is a great truth, a most sacred and solemn truth, in these words. But it is only a half truth, and it should not be mistaken for the whole truth. It is not less true, and it is true, perhaps, of a far greater number of human souls, that there are dark and dreadful hours when they are tempted to believe that virtue is but a name, that generosity is not better than selfishness, truth not better than falsehood, and the courage which defends a post of dangerous duty not better than the cowardice which abandons it; and in these hours I know not how the soul is to regain its trust in human goodness, except by holding fast its faith in Divine goodness; or how it can be strengthened to cling to what is right, except by cleaving to God. It is as possible to doubt of the authority of conscience as to doubt of the existence of God. There are few souls which have not their Philippi, when they are tempted to cry like Brutus, "O virtue, thou art but an empty name!" Blessed in such an hour is he who, feeling himself to be sinking in gloomy waters, cries to that God who is able to rescue him from the abyss, and clings to that justice in heaven which is the pledge that justice will be done on earth below. Thrice blessed, because he will be guided through the darkness of a sea of doubts even thus terrible to a haven of light and safety. Faith in duty helps us to faith in God: faith in God helps us to faith in duty. Duty and God, God and duty, that is the full truth.[46]

[46] See Appendix XXXV.

LECTURE IX.

_A PRIORI_ THEISTIC PROOF.

I.

The arguments which we have been considering are not merely proofs that God is, but indications of what He is. They testify to the Divine existence by exhibiting the Divine character. They are expressions of how He manifests Himself, and expositions of how we apprehend His self-manifestations. We have seen that against each of them various objections have been urged, but that these objections when examined do not approve themselves to reason; they leave the arguments against which they have been thrown quite unshaken. These arguments, however, although perfectly conclusive so far as they go, do not, even in combination, yield us the full idea of God which is entertained wherever theism prevails. They show Him to be the First Cause of the world--the Source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed therein. They do not prove Him to be infinite, eternal, absolute in being and perfection. Yet it cannot be questioned that the cultivated human mind thinks of God as the absolute, infinite, eternal, perfect First Cause, and that no lower idea of God can satisfy it. The intellect cannot accept, and the heart also revolts against, the thought that God is dependent on any antecedent or higher Being; that He is limited to a portion either of time or space; or that He is devoid of any excellence, deficient in any perfection. Such a thought is rejected as at once utterly unworthy of its object, and inherently inconsistent.

Are we, then, rationally warranted to assign to God those attributes which are called absolute or incommunicable? This is the question we have now to answer. What has been proved makes it comparatively easy to establish what is still unproved. We have ascertained that there is a God, the First Cause of the universe, the powerful, wise, good, and righteous Author of all things. We are conscious, also, that we have ideas of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, perfection, &c. We may be doubtful as to whence we got these ideas--we may feel that there is very much which is vague and perplexing in them; but we cannot question or deny that we have them. Having them, no matter how or whence we have got them, and knowing that God is, as also in a measure what He is, the remaining question for us is, Must these ideas apply to God or not? Must the First Cause be thought of as eternal or not--as infinite or finite, as perfect or imperfect? Reason, after it has reached a certain stage of culture, has never found this a difficult question. Indeed, often even before freeing itself from polytheism, it has been internally constrained to ascribe to some of the objects of adoration those very attributes of eternity, infinity, and perfection which polytheism implicitly denies. Once it has come to believe that the universe has its origin in a rational and righteous creative Will, it can hardly refuse to admit that that Will must be infinite and eternal. Where it has rejected polytheism without accepting theism, it has been forced to acknowledge the world itself to be infinite and eternal. When it has risen beyond the world, when it has reached an intelligent cause of the world, it cannot, of course, refuse to that cause the perfections which it would have granted to the effect--to the Creator what it would have attributed to the creation. The first and ultimate Being, and not any derived and dependent Being, must obviously be the infinite, eternal, and perfect Being.

The proof that God is absolute in being and perfection should, it seems to me, not precede but follow the proofs that there is a cause sufficiently powerful, wise, and good to account for physical nature, the mind of man, and the course of history. The usual mode of conducting the theistic argumentation has been the reverse; it has been to begin by endeavouring to prove, from principles held to be intuitive and ideas held to be innate, the necessary existence, absolute perfection, infinity, and eternity of God; or, in other words, with what is called the _a priori_ or ontological arguments. This mode of procedure seems to me neither judicious nor effective. If we have not established that there is a God by reasoning from facts, we must demonstrate His existence from ideas: but to get from the ideal to the actual may be impossible, and is certain to be difficult; whereas, if we have allowed facts to teach us all that they legitimately can about the existence, power, wisdom, and righteousness of God, it may be easy to show that our ideas of absolute being and perfection must apply to Him, and can only apply to Him.

Theism, according to the view now expressed, is not vitally interested in the fate of the so-called _a priori_ or ontological arguments. There may be serious defects in all these arguments, considered as formal demonstrations, and yet the conclusion which it is their aim to establish may be in no way compromised. It may be that the principles on which they rest do not directly involve the existence of God, and yet that they certainly, although indirectly, imply it, so that whoever denies it is rationally bound to set aside the fundamental conditions of thought, and to deem consciousness essentially delusive. It may be that the _a priori_ arguments are faulty as logical evolutions of the truth of the Divine existence from ultimate and necessary conceptions, and yet that they concur in manifesting that if God be not, the human mind is of its very nature self-contradictory; that God can only be disbelieved in at the cost of reducing the whole world of thought to a chaos. Whether this be the case or not, some of the _a priori_ proofs are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over in entire silence.[47]

[47] See Appendix XXXVI.

There is a charge which has been very often brought against the _a priori_ proofs, but which may be at once set aside as incorrect. It has been alleged that they proceed on forgetfulness of the truth that the Divine existence is the first and highest reality, and therefore cannot be demonstrated from anything prior to or higher than itself. But in no case that I know of have those who adopted what they supposed to be the _a priori_ line of argument been under the delusion that the ground of the existence of God was not in Himself, but in something outside of or above Himself, from which His existence could be deduced. Such a notion is, in fact, so self-contradictory, that no sane mind could deliberately entertain it. It would imply that theism could be founded on atheism. Whatever _a priori_ proof of the Divine existence may be, it has certainly never been imagined by those who employed it to be demonstration from an antecedent necessary cause.[48]

[48] See Appendix XXXVII.

_A priori_ proof is proof which proceeds from primary and necessary principles of thought. From its very nature it could only appear at a comparatively late period in the history of intelligence. It is only a profound study of the constitution of thought, only a refined reflective analysis of consciousness into its elements, which can bring to light the principles which necessarily underlie and govern all intellectual activity; and it is only on these principles that _a priori_ proof is based. As these principles never exist in an absolutely pure form, as what is universal and necessary in thought is never found wholly apart from what is particular and contingent, no absolutely pure _a priori_ argumentation need be looked for, and certainly none such can be discovered in the whole history of speculation.

Plato was, perhaps, the first to attempt to prove the existence of God from the essential principles of knowledge. He could not consistently reason from the impressions of sense or the phenomena of the visible world. He denied that sense is knowledge, and that visible things can be more than images and indications of truth. He maintained, however, that besides the visible world there is an intelligible world, with objects which reason sees and not sense. These objects are either conceptions or ideas, either hypothetical principles or absolute principles, either scientific assumptions and definitions or necessary and eternal truths which have their reality and evidence in themselves. The mathematical sciences deal with conceptions; but their chief value, according to Plato, is that they help the mind to rise to that absolute science--dialectics--which is conversant with ideas. The apprehension of ideas is the apprehension of the common element in the manifold, the universal in the individual, the permanent in the mutable. Reason contemplates ideas, and participates in ideas, and ideas are at once the essences of things and the regulative principles of cognition. By communion with them the reason reaches objective reality and possesses subjective certainty. They are not isolated and unconnected, but so related that each higher idea comprehends within it several lower ones, and that all combined constitute a graduated series or articulated organism, unified and completed by an idea which has none higher than itself, which is ultimate, which conditions all the others while it is conditioned by none. The supreme idea, which contains in itself all other ideas, is absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute good, absolute intelligence, and absolute being. It is the source of all true existence, knowledge, and excellence. It is God. In this part of its course the dialectic of Plato is simply a search for God. It is _a priori_ inasmuch as it rests on necessary ideas, but _a posteriori_ inasmuch as it proceeds from these ideas upwards to God in a manner which is essentially analytic and inductive. Only when God--the principle of principles--is reached, can it become synthetic and deductive.

The question, Is the Platonic proof of the Divine existence substantially true? is precisely equivalent to the question, Is the Platonic philosophy substantially true? Of course, I cannot here attempt to argue a theme so vast as Spiritualism _versus_ Empiricism, Platonism _versus_ Positivism. My belief, however, is, that Platonism is substantially true; that the objections which the empiricism and positivism at present prevalent urge against its fundamental positions are superficial and insufficient; that what is essential in its theory of ideas, and in the theism inseparable from that theory, must abide with our race for ever as a priceless possession. The Platonic argument--by which is meant not a particular argument incidentally employed by Plato, but the reasoning which underlies and pervades his entire philosophy as a speculative search for certainty--has been transmitted from age to age down to the present day by a long series of eminent thinkers. Augustine, for example, argues for the existence of God from the very nature of truth. It is impossible to think that there is no truth. If there were none, to affirm that there was none would be itself true; or, in other words, the denial of the existence of truth is a self-contradiction. But what is truth? It is not mere sensuous perception, not a something which belongs to the individual mind and varies with its moods and peculiarities, but a something which is unsensuous, unchangeable, and universal. The human reason changes and errs in its judgments; but ideas, necessary truths, are not the products, but the laws and conditions, of the human reason--they are over it, and it is only through apprehending, realising, and obeying them, that it enlightens and regulates our nature. These ideas--the laws of our intellectual and moral constitution--cannot have their source in us, but must be eternally inherent in an eternal, unchangeable, and perfect Being. This Being--the absolute truth and ultimate ground of all goodness--is God. Anselm reasoned in altogether the same spirit and in nearly the same manner. In one of his works he institutes an inquiry as to whether the goodness in good actions is or is not the same thing present in all; and when he has convinced himself that it is the same thing, he asks, What is it? and where has it a real existence? Ascending upwards by these stages, Good _is_; Good is _perfect_; Good is _one_; the one perfect Good is God,--he comes to the conclusion that the goodness constitutive of good actions has necessarily its source in God, and that the absolutely and essentially good is identical with God. In another of his works he similarly inquires whether there is any truth except mere actual existence. He holds that there is, and argues, as he had done before in regard to the good, that the absolute and ultimate truth must be God. Thomas Aquinas was at one with Anselm thus far. The very nature of knowledge seemed to him to show that it was in man only through the dependence of the human intelligence on an underived and perfect intelligence.

Among the many modern philosophers who have adopted and enforced the same doctrine I shall refer only to a few. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the founder of English deism, is very explicit on the subject. He thought of the human mind as united in the closest and most comprehensive way to the Divine mind through the universal notions of what he called the rational instinct. These notions are the laws which every faculty is meant to conform to and obey--the laws of all thought, affection, and action. As to nature and origin, they are, in Herbert's view, Divine; thoughts of God present in the mind of man; true revelations of the Father of spirits to His children. In apprehending one of them we have truly an intuition of a Divine attribute, of some feature of the Divine character. It is through contact, through communion with the Divine Intelligence, Love, and Will, that we know and feel and act. The Divine is the root and the law of human thought, emotion, and conduct. Not afar off, not to be realised by great stretch of intellect, not separated by innumerable existences which intervene between Him and us, but close around us, yea, with nothing between Him and our inmost souls, is the Being with whom we have to do. "In Him," really and without any figure of speech, "we live, and move, and have our being."

Among the various metaphysical proofs of Divine existence employed by Cudworth, one is in like manner founded on the very nature of knowledge. Knowledge, it is argued, is possible only through ideas which have their source in an eternal reason. Sense is not only not the whole of knowledge, but is in itself not at all knowledge; it is wholly relative and individual, and not knowledge until the mind adds to it what is absolute and universal. Knowledge does not begin with what is individual, but with what is universal. The individual is known by being brought under a universal, instead of the universal being gathered from a multitude of individuals. And these universals or ideas which underlie all the knowledge of all men, which originate it and do not originate in it, have existed eternally in the only mode in which truths can be said to be eternal, in an eternal mind. They come to us from an eternal mind, which is their proper home, and of which human reason is an emanation. "From whence it cometh to pass, that all minds, in the several places and ages of the world, have ideas or notions of things exactly alike, and truths indivisibly the same. Truths are not multiplied by the diversity of minds that apprehend them; because they are all but ectypal participations of one and the same original or archetypal mind and truth. As the same face may be reflected in several glasses; and the image of the same sun may be in a thousand eyes at once beholding it; and one and the same voice may be in a thousand ears listening to it: so when innumerable created minds have the same ideas of things, and understand the same truths, it is but one and the same eternal light that is reflected in them all ('that light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world,') or the same voice of that one everlasting Word that is never silent, re-echoed by them."

Malebranche's celebrated theory of "seeing all things in God" is but an exaggeration of the doctrine that "God is the light of all our seeing." It found a zealous English defender in John Norris of Bemerton. According to Malebranche and Norris, all objects are seen or understood through ideas, which derive their existence neither from the senses nor from the operations of the mind itself but are created in us by the Deity; and which are not drawn from contemplation of the perfections of the soul, but are inherent in the Divine nature. Better guarded statements of the Platonic argument from necessary ideas will be found in Leibnitz, and Bossuet, and Fenelon.

In the hands of Cousin more was again attempted to be deduced from it than it could legitimately yield. We may reject, however, his opinion that reason is not individual or personal, without rejecting with it the substance at least of what he has so eloquently said regarding the necessary ideas which govern the reason, or the reasoning by which he seeks to show that truth is incomprehensible without God, and that all thought implies a spontaneous faith in God. The most recent defenders of theism employ in one form or another the same argument. In the works of Ulrici, Hettinger, and Luthardt, of Saisset and Simon, of Thompson and Tulloch, it still holds a prominent place.

I pass from it to indicate the character of some other arguments, which are of a much more formal nature, but which have by no means commanded so wide an assent. In fact, the arguments to which I now refer have never laid hold of the common reason of men. They are the ingenious constructions of highly-gifted metaphysicians, and have awakened much interest in a certain number of speculative minds, but they have not contributed in any considerable degree either to the maintenance or the diffusion of theistic belief, and have had no lengthened continuous history. They obviously stand, therefore, on a very different footing from the proofs which have already been adduced--proofs which are as catholic as the conclusions which they support, or as any of the doctrines of the Christian system.

The Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, author of the famous Hymn to Zeus, argued that every comparison, in affirming or denying one thing to be better than another, implied and presupposed the existence of a superlative or an absolutely good and perfect Being. Centuries later, Boethius had recourse to nearly identical reasoning. It is only, he maintained, through the idea of perfection that we can judge anything to be imperfect; and the consciousness or perception of imperfection leads reason necessarily to believe that there is a perfect existence--one than whom a better cannot be conceived--God. Cleanthes and Boethius were thus the precursors of Anselm, who was, however, the first to endeavour to show that from the very idea of God as the highest Being His necessary reality may be strictly deduced. In consequence, Anselm was the founder of that kind of argumentation which, in the opinion of many, is alone entitled to be described as _a priori_ or ontological. He reasoned thus: "The fool may say in his heart, There is no God; but he only proves thereby that he is a fool, for what he says is self-contradictory. Since he denies that there is a God, he has in his mind the idea of God, and that idea implies the existence of God, for it is the idea of a Being than which a higher cannot be conceived. That than which a higher cannot be conceived cannot exist merely as an idea, because what exists merely as an idea is inferior to what exists in reality as well as in idea. The idea of a highest Being which exists merely in thought, is the idea of a highest Being which is not the highest even in thought, but inferior to a highest Being which exists in fact as well as in thought." This reasoning found unfavourable critics even among the contemporaries of Anselm, and has commended itself completely to few. Yet it may fairly be doubted whether it has been conclusively refuted, and some of the objections most frequently urged against it are certainly inadmissible. It is no answer to it, for example, to deny that the idea of God is innate or universal. The argument merely assumes that he who denies that there is a God must have an idea of God. There is also no force, as Anselm showed, in the objection of Gaunilo, that the existence of God can no more be inferred from the idea of a perfect being, than the existence of a perfect island is to be inferred from the idea of such an island. There neither is nor can be an idea of an island which is greater and better than any other that can ever be conceived. Anselm could safely promise that he would make Gaunilo a present of such an island when he had really imagined it. Only one being--an infinite, independent, necessary being--can be perfect in the sense of being greater and better than every other conceivable being. The objection that the ideal can never logically yield the real--that the transition from thought to fact must be in every instance illegitimate--is merely an assertion that the argument is fallacious. It is an assertion which cannot fairly be made until the argument has been exposed and refuted. The argument is that a certain thought of God is found necessarily to imply His existence. The objection that existence is not a predicate, and that the idea of a God who exists is not more complete and perfect than the idea of a God who does not exist, is, perhaps, not incapable of being satisfactorily repelled. Mere existence is not a predicate, but specifications or determinations of existence are predicable. Now the argument nowhere implies that existence is a predicate; it implies only that reality, necessity, and independence of existence are predicates of existence; and it implies this on the ground that existence _in re_ can be distinguished from existence _in conceptu_, necessary from contingent existence, self-existence from derived existence. Specific distinctions must surely admit of being predicated. That the exclusion of existence--which here means real and necessary existence--from the idea of God does not leave us with an incomplete idea of God, is not a position, I think, which can be maintained. Take away existence from among the elements in the idea of a perfect being, and the idea becomes either the idea of a nonentity or the idea of an idea, and not the idea of a perfect being at all. Thus, the argument of Anselm is unwarrantably represented as an argument of four terms instead of three. Those who urge the objection seem to me to prove only that if our thought of God be imperfect, a being who merely realised that thought would be an imperfect being; but there is a vast distance between this truism and the paradox that an unreal being may be an ideally perfect being.

The Cartesian proofs have been much and keenly discussed. The one which founds on the fact of our existence and its limitations is manifestly _a posteriori_. The other two both proceed from the idea of a perfect being. The first is, that the idea of an all-perfect and unlimited being is involved in the very consciousness of imperfection and limitation. The imperfect can only be seen in the light of the perfect; the finite cannot be conceived of except in relation to the infinite. But can a finite and imperfect cause--like the human mind or the outward world--be reasonably supposed to originate the idea of an infinite and perfect being? Descartes holds that it cannot; that the idea of an infinite and perfect being can only be explained by the existence and operation of such a being. Was he correct in this judgment? Perhaps not; but what has been urged in refutation of it is probably by no means conclusive. It has been said that the ideas of infinity and perfection are mere generalisations from experience. But this is a statement which can only be proved on the principles of sensationalism, and never has been proved. It has been likewise said that these ideas are purely subjective, or, in other words, that there may be nothing whatever to correspond to them. But this is a meaningless collocation of words. No finite mind can conceive the infinite, for example, as within itself at all. The human mind can only think of the infinite as without itself. If the infinite be not objective, the idea of the infinite is false and delusive. The infinite, it has been further objected, means merely what is not finite; and the perfect what is not imperfect. So be it; the argument is as valid if the words be taken in that sense as in any other. Only do not add, as some do, that the perfect and the imperfect, the finite and the infinite, are mere verbal correlatives. Such a proposition can be spoken, but it cannot be thought; and it is most undesirable to divorce thought from speech. It has also been urged that all men have not the idea of perfection; that different men have different ideas thereof; and that in each man who possesses it the idea is constantly changing. This must be granted; but it does not affect the argument, which is founded on the existence of the idea of a perfect being, and not on the perfection of the idea itself.

The second form of the Cartesian argument is, that God cannot be thought of as a perfect Being unless He be also thought of as a necessarily existent Being; and that, therefore, the thought of God implies the existence of God. "Just as because," for example, "the equality of its three angles to two right angles is necessarily comprised in the idea of a triangle, the mind is firmly persuaded that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; so, from its perceiving necessary and eternal existence to be comprised in the idea which it has of an all-perfect Being, it ought manifestly to conclude that this all-perfect Being exists." Kant met this argument thus: "It is a contradiction that there should be a triangle the three angles of which are not equal to two right angles, or that there should be a God who is not necessarily existent. I cannot in either case retain the subject and do away with the predicate. If I assume a triangle, I must take it with its three angles. If I assume a God, I must grant Him to be necessarily existent. But why should I assume either that there is a triangle or that there is a God? I may annul the subject in both cases, and then there will be no contradiction in annulling the predicate in both cases. There may be no such thing as a triangle, why should there be such a Being as God?"

This reasoning of Kant has generally been accepted as conclusive. It does not appear to me to be so. He ought not merely to have asserted but to have shown that we can annul the subject in either of the cases mentioned. We obviously cannot. I can say "there is no triangle," but instead of annulling that implies the idea of a triangle, and from the idea of a triangle it follows that its three angles are equal to two right angles. In like manner I can say "there is no God," but that is not to annul but to imply the idea of God, and it is from the idea of God that, according to Descartes, the existence of God necessarily follows. Kant should have seen that the proposition "there is no God" could be no impediment to an argument the very purpose of which is to prove that that proposition is a self-contradiction. It is futile to meet this by saying that existence ought not to be included in any mere conception, for it is not existence but necessary existence which is included in the conception reasoned from, and that God can be thought of otherwise than as necessarily existent requires to be proved, not assumed. To affirm that existence cannot be given or reached through thought, but only through sense and sensuous experience, can prove nothing except the narrowness of the philosophy on which such a thesis is based.

Cudworth, Leibnitz, and Mendelssohn modified the Cartesian argument last specified in ways which do not greatly differ from one another. It may be doubted whether their modifications were improvements.

In the eighteenth century there were elaborated a great many proofs which claimed to be _a priori_ theistic demonstrations based on the notions of existence and causality. Assuming that something is, and that nothing cannot be the cause of something, these arguments attempted to establish that there must be an unoriginated Being of infinite perfection, and possessed of the attributes which we ascribe to God. The most famous of them was, perhaps, that of Dr Samuel Clarke, contained in the Boyle Lecture of 1704. But Dr Richard Fiddes, the Rev. Colin Campbell, Mr Wollaston, Moses Lowman, the Chevalier Ramsay, Dean Hamilton, and many others, devised ingenious demonstrations of a similar nature. It is impossible for me to discuss here their merits and demerits. Probably not one of them has completely satisfied more than a few speculative minds. They are certainly not fitted to carry conviction to the ordinary practical understanding. Yet it is not easy to detect flaws in some of them; and the more carefully they are studied, the more, I am inclined to think, will it be recognised that they are pervaded by a substantial vein of truth. They attempted logically to evolve what was implied in certain primary intuitions or fundamental conditions of the mind, and although they may not have accomplished all that they aimed at, they have at least succeeded in showing that unless there exists an eternal, infinite, and unconditioned Being, the human mind is, in its ultimate principles, self-contradictory and delusive.[49]

[49] See Appendix XXXVIII.

There must, for example, unless consciousness and reason are utterly untrustworthy, be an eternal Being. Present existence necessarily implies to the human intellect eternal existence. The man who says that a finite mind cannot rise to the idea of an eternal Being talks foolishly, for all the thinking of a finite mind implies belief in what he says is inaccessible to human thought. No man can thoughtfully affirm his own existence, or the existence even of a passing fancy of his mind, or of a grain of sand, without feeling that that affirmation as certainly implies that something existed from all eternity as any mathematical demonstration whatever implies its conclusion. And this truth, that the most transient thing cannot be conceived of as existing unless an eternal Being exist, may be syllogistically expressed and exhibited in a variety of ways, because the contradictions involved in denying it are numerous. This is what has been done by the authors above mentioned with much ingenuity, and by some of them in a manner which never has been and never can be refuted. It may be doubted whether they did wisely in throwing their arguments into syllogistic form; but as nobody ventures to undertake the refutation of them, they must be admitted to be substantially valid. The reasonings of men like Clarke and Fiddes, Lowman and Ramsay, have sufficiently proved that whoever denies such propositions as these,--Something has existed from eternity; The eternal Being must be necessarily existent, immutable, and independent; There is but one unoriginated Being in the universe; The unoriginated Being must be unlimited or perfect in all its attributes, &c.,--inevitably falls into manifest absurdities.

This, it may be objected, is not equivalent to a proof of the existence of an infinite and eternal Being. It leads merely to the alternative, either an infinite and eternal Being exists, or the consciousness and reason of man cannot be trusted. The absolute sceptic will rejoice to have the alternative offered to him; that the human mind is essentially untrustworthy is precisely what he maintains. I answer that I admit that the arguments in question do not amount to a direct positive proof, but that they constitute a _reductio ad absurdum_, which is just as good, and that if they do not exclude absolute scepticism, it is merely because absolute scepticism is willing to accept what is absurd. I am not going to examine absolute scepticism at present. I shall have something to say regarding it when I treat of antitheistic theories. Just now it is sufficient simply to point out that if disbelief in an infinite, self-existent, eternal Being necessarily implies belief in the untrustworthiness of all our mental processes, the absolute sceptic is the only man who can consistently disbelieve in God. Unless we are prepared to believe that no distinction can be established between truth and error--that there is no certainty that our senses and our understandings are not at every moment deceiving us--no real difference between our perceptions when we are awake and our visions when we are asleep--no ground of assurance that we are not as much deluded when following a demonstration of Euclid as any have been who busied themselves in attempting to square the circle,--we must accept all arguments which show that disbelief of the existence of an infinite and eternal Being logically involves a self-contradiction or an absurdity, as not less valid than a direct positive demonstration of the existence of such a Being. If, although I am constrained to conclude that there is an infinite and eternal Being, I may reject the conclusion on the supposition that reason is untrustworthy, I am clearly bound, in self-consistency, to set aside the testimony of my senses also by the assumption that they are habitually delusive. When any view or theory is shown to involve absolute scepticism it is sufficiently refuted, for absolute scepticism effaces the distinction between reason and unreason, and practically prefers unreason to reason.

II.

The _a priori_ arguments have a value independent of their truth and of their power to produce conviction. True or false, persuasive or merely perplexing, they are admirable means of disciplining the mind distinctly to apprehend certain ideas which experience cannot yield, yet which must be comprehended in any worthy view taken of God. They help us steadily to contemplate and patiently to consider such abstract and difficult thoughts as those of being, absolute being, necessary being, cause, substance, perfection, infinity, eternity, &c.; and this is a service so great, that it may safely be said--as some writer whose name I cannot recall has said--that they will never be despised so long as speculative thinking is held in repute.

While believing that several of these arguments on the whole accomplish what they undertake, I am not prepared to maintain that any of them are faultless or even conclusive throughout. They are all, probably, much too formal and elaborate, so far as any directly practical purpose is concerned. It ought to be constantly kept in view that they presuppose an immediate apprehension of the infinite, and that their value consists entirely in establishing that that apprehension implies the reality and presence of God. The simplest mode of doing this must be the best. It may be thought that no reasoning at all is needed; that the intuition does not require to be supplemented by any inference; that if the infinite be apprehended, the living God must be self-evidently present to the human mind. But this is plainly a hasty view. Few atheists will deny that something is infinite, or that they immediately apprehend various aspects of infinity. What they refuse to acknowledge is, that the apprehension of the infinite implies more than the boundlessness of space, the eternity of time, and the self-existence of matter. There is certainly some reasoning needed in order to show that this interpretation of the intuition is inadequate. But such reasoning cannot be too direct, for otherwise the function of the intuition is almost certain to be obscured, and argument is almost certain to be credited with accomplishing far more than it really effects.

According to the view of the theistic argumentation which has been given in the present course of lectures, all that is now necessary to complete the theistic proof is very simple indeed. The universe has been shown to have an inconceivably powerful and intelligent cause, a Supreme Creator, who has dealt bountifully with all His creatures, who has given to men a moral law, and who has abundantly manifested in history that He loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. We are further conscious of having ideas or intuitions of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, and perfection. We may dispute as to whence and how we have got them, but we cannot deny that we possess them. Were any person, for example, to affirm that he did not believe that there is a self-existent or necessary being--a being which derived its existence from no other and depends upon no other but is what it is in and of itself alone--we should be entitled to tell him either that he did not know the meaning of what he said, or that he did not himself believe what he said. But if we undoubtedly possess these ideas, they must, unless they are wholly delusive--which is what we are unable to conceive--be predicable of some being. The sole question for us is, Of what being? And the whole of our previous argumentation has shut us up to one answer. It must be, Of Him who has been proved to be the First Cause of all things--the Source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed in the universe. It cannot be the universe itself, for that has been shown to be but an effect--to have before and behind it a Mind, a Person. It cannot be ourselves or anything to which our senses can reach, seeing that we and they are finite, contingent, and imperfect. The author of the universe alone--the Father of our spirits, and the Giver of every good and perfect gift--can be uncreated and unconditioned, infinite and perfect.

This completes the idea of God so far as it can be reached or formed by natural reason. And it gives consistency to the idea. The conclusions of the _a posteriori_ arguments fail to satisfy either mind or heart until they are connected with, and supplemented by, this intuition of the reason--infinity. The conception of any other than an infinite God--a God unlimited in all perfections--is a self-contradictory conception which the intellect refuses to entertain. The self-contradictions inherent in such a conception have been exposed times without number, and in ways which cannot possibly be refuted. The chief value of most of the _a priori_ arguments lies in such demonstration; and no theologian who has thoughtfully discussed either the immanent or the transitive attributes of God has been able to dispense with as much of _a priori_ reasoning as necessary to establish that a denial of the eternity, or immutability, or omnipotence, or ubiquity, or omniscience, or any other attribute implied in the infinity of the Divine Being, logically leads to absurdity. If the infinity or independence, for example, of the First Cause be questioned, whoever would maintain it must return some such answer as that which Mr Spencer, although not assenting to it, puts in these words: "If we go a step further, and ask what is the nature of this First Cause, we are driven by an inexorable logic to certain further conclusions. Is the First Cause finite or infinite? If we say finite, we involve ourselves in a dilemma. To think of the First Cause as finite is to think of it as limited. To think of it as limited necessarily implies a conception of something beyond its limits: it is absolutely impossible to conceive a thing as bounded without conceiving a region surrounding its boundaries. What now must we say of this region? If the First Cause is limited, and there consequently lies something outside of it, this something must have no First Cause--must be uncaused. But if we admit that there can be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for anything. If beyond that finite region over which the First Cause extends there lies a region which we are compelled to regard as infinite, over which it does not extend--if we admit that there is an infinite uncaused surrounding the finite caused--we tacitly abandon the hypothesis of causation altogether. Thus it is impossible to consider the First Cause as finite. And if it cannot be finite it must be infinite. Another inference concerning the First Cause is equally unavoidable. It must be independent. If it is dependent, it cannot be the First Cause; for that must be the First Cause on which it depends. It is not enough to say that it is partially independent; since this implies some necessity which determines its partial dependence, and this necessity, be it what it may, must be a higher cause, or the true First Cause, which is a contradiction. But to think of the First Cause as totally independent, is to think of it as that which exists in the absence of all other existence; seeing that if the presence of any other existence is necessary, it must be partially dependent on that other existence, and so cannot be the First Cause."

It is impossible, I think, to show that we are justified in ascribing to God the attributes most essential to His nature without having recourse to a very considerable extent to reasoning of an _a priori_ kind similar to that of which we have a specimen in the passage just quoted. Such reasoning may be perfectly legitimate and conclusive. Mr Spencer, I have said, does not accept as valid the arguments cited. But he admits that from their inferences "there appears to be no escape," characterises their logic as "inexorable," and makes not the slightest attempt directly to refute them. On what grounds, then, does he withhold his assent from them?

One reason is, that the very conclusions which such arguments yield, lead, he thinks, by a logic as inexorable, to self-contradictions as great as those found to be involved in the denial of the infinity, independence, &c., of God. Reasoning from which there appears to be no escape, and in which no logical fallacy can be detected, yields the conclusion that there is an infinite and absolute First Cause; but reasoning as faultless yields also the conclusion that an infinite and absolute First Cause is a self-contradiction--that there is no infinite and absolute First Cause. In other words, an inexorable logic proves both that there is an infinite and absolute First Cause, and that there is none. Therefore it proves nothing at all except the worthlessness of logic when applied to such an idea as that of a First Cause.

Most persons will probably be of opinion that a view like this is its own sufficient refutation; that the reasoning which tries to prove that reasoning may be necessarily and essentially self-contradictory is self-condemned. And they will be quite right in their opinion. If for any proposition the proof and counter-proof be equally cogent--if for contradictories there may be perfect demonstrations--it is not God only, but everything, that we shall have to cease to believe in. Such a _reductio ad absurdum_ of a proposition would be also a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the reason itself, leaving no inference, no intuition, no perception, to be rationally trusted. A scepticism more absolute and comprehensive than any human being has dared to advocate, would be the only legitimate result. Our whole nature would have to be regarded as a lie. But we need have no fear of reason thus terminating its existence by committing suicide. If we are disposed to be afraid that the human mind is in danger of so terrible a calamity, an examination of the reasoning by which it has been attempted to show that the idea of an infinite and absolute First Cause involves a variety of contradictions ought speedily to reassure us. Few persons of ordinary reasoning powers, if not committed to a foregone conclusion, will regard as "inexorable logic" the argumentation by which Mr Mansel and Mr Spencer fancy that they show that one and the same Being cannot be a cause, infinite and absolute, or its inferences as those "from which there appears to be no escape." On the contrary, ninety-nine men in a hundred will deem them extremely weak, and possessed of no other plausibility than that which they derive from an inaccurate and ambiguous use of language. There are arguments proving that there is a First Cause, and that the First Cause must be infinite and absolute, in which no fallacy can be detected. But the only arguments which have yet been invented to show that the First Cause cannot without contradiction be thought of as infinite and absolute, are good for little else than to exercise students of logic in the examination of fallacies. The two sets of arguments are by no means of equal worth and weight.

They are also notably different in nature. Those which attempt to prove the First Cause to be infinite and absolute imply no more than that the mind may conclude that such a cause is not finite, dependent, and imperfect. In this there is nothing arrogant. Those which attempt to prove that the First Cause cannot be infinite and absolute are of a much less humble character. They imply that we have a positive and comprehensive knowledge of the First Cause; the infinite, and the absolute; that we can define, compare, and contrast them, and thus find out that they are incompatible and contradictory. But we may be quite unable to do anything of the kind, and yet be fully entitled to hold that the First Cause is not finite, dependent, or imperfect. We may reason _to_ the infinite, if we only know what the finite is and is not, without being justified in reasoning _from_ the infinite, as if we knew definitely, not to say exhaustively, its nature.

The idea of an infinite First Cause--the idea of the infinite God--contains no self-contradiction; on the contrary, it solves certain otherwise inevitable self-contradictions of thought. It is only by the apprehension of a Being who passeth knowledge that knowledge can be rendered self-consistent; only by the admission that all existence is not included within the conditions of the finite that thought can escape self-destruction. But, of course, we may easily put contradictions into our idea of an infinite Being, by assuming that we know more about unoriginated existence, primary causation, infinity, independence, &c., than we really do, and by defining or describing them in ways for which we have no warrant. The idea of an infinite First Cause is, it must not be forgotten, the idea of an incomprehensible Being. No sane mind can refuse to acknowledge that something is eternal and immense; but we cannot comprehend eternity and immensity, and when we reason as if we comprehended them, we speedily find ourselves involved in absurdities. We may know and believe that God is eternal and immense, but if He be so, we undoubtedly cannot comprehend Him. We cannot think of God otherwise than as self-existent, yet we certainly cannot comprehend the nature of self-existence. We can think of it negatively as unoriginated and independent existence, and consequently as a positive, most perfect, and peculiar manner of existence, unlike that which is characteristic of ourselves and other finite beings; but we are ignorant wherein its peculiarities and perfections positively consist.

The incomprehensibleness of the Divine perfections is no reasonable objection against their reality. We do not comprehend the manner even of our own existence, although we are quite certain that we do exist. Assent, however, has often been refused to _a priori_ theistic argumentation, not on the ground that it is illogical, but on the ground that the conclusions inferred are incomprehensible. Thus the author of whom I have just been speaking urges in favour of the procedure which he adopts the following argument, in addition to the one already specified: "Self-existence necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, implies the conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility." "Those who cannot conceive a self-existent universe, and who therefore assume a creator as the source of the universe, take for granted that they can conceive a self-existent creator. The mystery which they recognise in this great fact surrounding them on every side, they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact, and then suppose that they have solved the mystery. But they delude themselves. Self-existence is rigorously inconceivable; and this holds true whatever be the nature of the object of which it is predicated. Whoever agrees that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible idea."

Now, that we can by no mental effort conceive existence without a beginning is certain, if by conceive be meant to comprehend, or definitely imagine, or sensibly represent; but that we not only conceive but cannot avoid conceiving such existence is equally certain, if by conceive be simply meant to be conscious of, to know to be true, to be rationally convinced. It is impossible seriously to doubt that existence was without beginning. Something is, and something never sprang from nothing. From nothing nothing ever came or can come. Something always was. Being was without beginning. Mr Spencer can no more deliver himself from the sublime and awful necessity of acknowledging an eternal something--a self-existent reality--underlying the whole universe, than any one else. His own Absolute is such a something, such a reality; and although, in accordance with his peculiar use of the words "know" and "conceive," he denies that that Absolute can be known or conceived, he admits that its positive existence is a "necessary datum of consciousness." Further, no intelligent theist argues "that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence." On the contrary, the theist, far from objecting to the idea of self-existence as impossible, admits it to be a necessary idea. He recognises that the universe must be allowed to be self-existent until it is shown to be a creation or event. It is only after an examination of its character--only after having convinced himself that it is an effect--that he transfers the attribute of self-existence to its cause or creator. To say that in doing so he flees from one mystery to another as great, is a statement which admits of no possible justification. In a word, Mr Spencer's account of the reasoning of the theist is an inexplicable caricature.

The _a priori_ reasoning employed in the establishment of theism is independent of any particular theory as to the origin of our ideas of infinity. It presupposes merely that these ideas are valid--are not delusive. It is only as predisposing to, or implying, scepticism, as to their truth or objective worth, that a theory as to their origin has a bearing on their application. Such scepticism cannot be logically limited to the ideas in question. If we do not accept these ideas as true and trustworthy, absolute scepticism is rationally inevitable. An examination of the nature and principles of scepticism will make this manifest, but I cannot enter on that examination at present.

In conclusion, I remark that the conception of any other than an infinite God--a God unlimited in all perfections--is not only a self-contradictory but an unworthy conception; it not only perplexes the intellect but revolts the spiritual affections. The heart can find no secure rest except on an infinite God. If less than omnipotent, He may be unable to help us in the hour of sorest need. If less than omniscient, He may overlook us. If less than perfectly just, we cannot unreservedly trust Him. If less than perfectly benevolent, we cannot fully love Him. The whole soul can only be devoted to One who is believed to be absolutely good.

LECTURE X.

MERE THEISM INSUFFICIENT.

I.

I have endeavoured to show, in the course of lectures which I am now bringing to a close, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence prove the existence, and so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God. This truth ought always to be combined with another--namely, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence "are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation." Reason sends forth a true light which is to be trusted and followed so far as it extends, but which is much more limited than the wants of human nature. The deepest discoveries and the highest achievements of the unaided intellect need to be supplemented by truths which can only come to us through special revelation. The natural knowledge of God which man can attain by the exercise of his own faculties is not sufficient to make him feel that the Eternal bears to him fatherly love, or to break the power of sin within him and over him, or to sustain and develop his moral and spiritual life. It falls far short of what is required to enable a human soul, a religious and immortal being, to accomplish its true destination. It falls far short, in other words, of being what is "necessary unto salvation," in the broad and comprehensive sense which the term salvation bears throughout Scripture.

There are those who, instead of regarding theism as simply so much fundamental truth which Christianity presupposes and applies, would oppose theism to Christianity, and substitute theism for Christianity. They would rest in mere theism and would reject Christianity. They represent theism, dissociated from Christianity, as all-sufficient, and as the religion to which alone the future belongs. In doing so, these men--many of them most earnest and excellent men--seem to me to show great want of reflection, great ignorance of the teachings of history, and a very superficial acquaintance with human nature.

Atheism, polytheism, and pantheism have always proved stronger than mere theism--more popular, more influential on ordinary minds. It is only in alliance with revelation that theism has been able to cope successfully with these foes. In no land, and in no age, has a theism resting exclusively on the authority of reason gained and retained the assent of more than a small minority of the community. Its adherents may have been men who did credit to their creed--honourable, high-minded, cultivated men--but they have always been few. In India, in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, some specially gifted and religious minds reached, or at least approached, theism; but, on the whole, the development of belief in all these countries was not towards but away from theism. The Israelites, although authoritatively taught monotheism, fell back again and again into polytheism. Mythology is not merely "a disease of language," but also a testimony to the fact that the minds and hearts of the mass of mankind cannot be satisfied with a Deity who is only to be apprehended by abstract thought,--a proof that while a few speculative philosophers may rest content with the God discovered by pure reason, the countless millions of their fellow-men are so influenced by sense, imagination, and feeling, that they have ever been found to substitute for such a God deities whom they could represent under visible forms, as subject to the limitations of space and time, and as actuated by the passions of humanity. Pantheism has a powerful advantage over theism, inasmuch as it can give a colouring of religion to what is virtually atheism, and a semblance of reason even to the most wildly extravagant polytheism. There is no logical necessity why a mere theist should become an atheist, but the causes which tend to produce atheism are too strong to be counteracted by any force inherent in mere theism; and hence, as a matter of historical fact, mere theism has always, even in modern Christendom, largely given place to atheism. All the powers of the world above, and of the world to come, are needed to oppose the powers of the world below, and of the world which now is. Only a much fuller exhibition of the Divine character than is presented to us by mere theism can make faith in God the ruling principle of human life. Mere theism might have sufficed us had we remained perfectly rational and perfectly sinless; but those who fancy that it is sufficient for men as they are, only make evident that they know not what men are. In the state into which we have fallen, we need a higher light to guide us than any which shines on sea or land; we need the light which only shines from the gracious countenance of Christ.

"The world by wisdom knew not God." The whole history of the heathen world testifies to the truth of this affirmation of St Paul. It is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God as a responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of the heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin, controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the conduct. Not one religion devised by man rested on a worthy view of the character of God; not one did not substitute for the living and true God false and dead idols, or represent Him in a mean and dishonouring light. We are apt to associate with the religion of Greece and Rome the religious philosophy of a few eminent Greek and Roman thinkers who rose above the religion of their age and country. The religion itself was mainly the creation of imagination, and in various respects was extremely demoralising in its tendencies. The worshippers of Jupiter and Juno, of Mars and Venus, and the gods and goddesses who were supposed to be their companions, must have been very often not the better but the worse for worshipping such beings. Certainly, they could find no elevating ideal or correct and consistent rule of moral life among the capricious and unrighteous and impure objects of their adoration. It was less from the religion, the idolatrous polytheism, of Greece and Rome that the human soul in these lands drew spiritual inspiration, than from philosophy, from reason apprehending those truths of natural religion which the positive religion concealed and disfigured and contradicted. If salvation be deliverance from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, from love of the world to love of God, no sane man will say that the Greek or Roman religion was the way to it, or an indication of the way to it.

Did, then, the philosophers discover the way? There is no need that we should depreciate what they did. Men like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, among the Greeks--like Cicero, Epictetus, and Antoninus, among the Romans--obtained wonderful glimpses of Divine truth, and gave to the world noble moral instructions, which are of inestimable value even to this day. But they all failed to effect any deep and extensive reform. They did not turn men from the worship of idols to the service of the true God. They were unable to raise any effective barrier either to superstition or to vice. They were insufficiently assured in their own minds, and spoke as without authority to others. They saw too clearly to be able to believe that the popular religion was true, but not clearly enough to know what to put in its place. In the systems and lives of the very greatest of them there were terrible defects, and neither the doctrine nor the conduct of the majority of those who pretended to follow them, the common specimens of philosophers, was fitted to improve society. Philosophy found out _many truths_, but not _the truth_. It did not disclose the holiness and love of God--discovered no antidote for the poison of sin--showed the soul no fountain of cleansing, healing, and life.

The true character of the philosophical theism of antiquity has been admirably described by one of the ablest theologians of the present day. "Theism was discussed as a philosophical, not as a religious question, as one rationale among others of the origin of the material universe, but as no more affecting practice than any great scientific hypothesis does now. Theism was not a test which separated the orthodox philosopher from the heterodox, which distinguished belief from disbelief; it established no breach between the two opposing theorists; it was discussed amicably as an open question: and well it might be, for of all questions there was not one which could make less practical difference to the philosopher, or, upon his view, to anybody, than whether there was or was not a God. Nothing would have astonished him more than, when he had proved in the lecture-hall the existence of a God, to have been told to worship Him. 'Worship whom?' he would have exclaimed; 'worship what? worship how?' Would you picture him indignant at the polytheistic superstition of the crowd, and manifesting some spark of the fire of St Paul 'when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry,' you could not be more mistaken. He would have said that you did not see a plain distinction; that the crowd was right on the religious question, and the philosopher right on the philosophical; that however men might uphold in argument an infinite abstraction, they could not worship it; and that the hero was much better fitted for worship than the Universal Cause--fitted for it not in spite of, but in consequence of, his want of true divinity. The same question was decided in the same way in the speculations of the Brahmans. There the Supreme Being figures as a characterless, impersonal essence, the mere residuum of intellectual analysis, pure unity, pure simplicity. No temple is raised to him, no knee is bended to him. Without action, without will, without affection, without thought, he is the substratum of everything, himself a nothing. The Universal Soul is the Unconscious Omnipresent _Looker-on_; the complement, as coextensive spectator, of the universal drama of nature; the motionless mirror upon which her boundless play and sport, her versatile postures, her multitudinous evolutions are reflected, as the image of the rich and changing sky is received into the passive bosom of the lake. Thus the idea of God, so far from calling forth in the ancient world the idea of worship, ever stood in antagonism with it: the idol was worshipped because he was not God, God was not worshipped because He was. One small nation alone out of all antiquity worshipped God, believed the universal Being to be a personal Being. That nation was looked upon as a most eccentric and unintelligible specimen of humanity for doing so; but this whimsical fancy, as it appeared in the eyes of the rest, was cherished by it as the most sacred deposit; it was the foundation of its laws and polity; and from this narrow stock this conception was engrafted upon the human race."[50]

[50] Canon Mosley, On Miracles, Lect. IV.

It is historically certain, then, that the world by its unaided wisdom failed to know God. Of course, it may be said that the experiment was incomplete; that even if Christianity had not appeared, the human mind would have found out in process of time all the religious truth needed to satisfy the human heart, guide human life, and sustain human society. But such an assertion is quite arbitrary. History gives it no confirmation. It was only after human wisdom had a lengthened and unembarrassed opportunity of showing what it could accomplish in the most favourable circumstances, and after it had clearly displayed its insufficiency, that Christianity appeared. Christ did not come till it was manifest that reason was wandering farther and farther away from God--that religion had no inherent principle of self-improvement--that man had done his utmost with the unaided resources of his nature to devise a salvation, and had failed. There was no probability whatever that a new and higher civilisation would rise on the ruins of that which fell when the hordes of Northern barbarians subdued and overran the Roman empire, had not Christianity been present to direct the work of construction.

We need not, however, discuss what might or might not have happened, supposing the sun of Christianity had not appeared on the horizon when that of classical civilisation was hastening to its setting, since it is obvious that the science and philosophy even of the present day, dissevered from revelation, can produce no religion capable of satisfying, purifying, and elevating man's spiritual nature. They are far advanced beyond the stage which they had reached in the time of St Paul. Knowledge has since received large accessions from all sides, and reflection has been taught by a lengthened and varied process of correction and discipline valuable lessons. In mathematical and physical science especially there has been enormous progress. The human mind is now enriched not only with the intellectual wealth which it has inherited from Greece and Rome, but with that of many ages not less fruitful than those in which they flourished. Can we accomplish, then, what the Greeks and Romans so signally failed to achieve? Can we, with all our knowledge of nature and man, devise a religion which shall be at once merely rational and thoroughly effective? Can we, when we set aside Christianity, construct a creed capable of not only commanding the assent of the intellect, but of attracting and changing the heart, quickening and guiding the conscience, and purifying and ennobling the conduct? Can we build a system worthy to be called a religion on any other foundation than that which has been laid in the Gospel? If science and philosophy cannot do anything of this kind even at the present day, we are surely at length entitled to say that the world needs to know more about God than it can find out for itself. In proof that they cannot, we would appeal both to facts and reason--both to the character of what science and philosophy have actually done in this connection, and to the nature of the task which their injudicious friends would impose on them.

What, then, even at the present day, do the ablest of those who reject Christianity propose to offer us instead? Comte would have us to worship humanity. Can we? Comte himself did not believe that we can in any but a very partial and insincere way. If we could, would our worship do either our minds or hearts more good than the worship of Jupiter and Juno did the Greeks of old? Strauss would have us to revere the universe. Is that not to go back to fetichism? Might we not just as wisely and profitably adore a stock or stone? Herbert Spencer would present to us for God the Unknowable. But what thoughts, what feelings, can we have about the Unknowable? Might we not as well worship empty space, the eternal no, or the absolute nothing? Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Mainlander, and others, would have us to go back to Buddhism and welcome annihilation. But it is clear as the light that if the advice were acted on, the springs of intellectual life and social progress would soon be dried up. The philosophy and science on which they exclusively rely have enabled none of these men to find out God; nay, they have left them under the delusion that there is no God to find out, except those strange gods to which I have referred. And being without God in the world, these philosophers, with all their knowledge and accomplishments, are also without any hope of a life beyond the grave. No man need go to them with the question, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Among all their differences--and they are many and radical--on one point they are agreed, and it is that eternal life is but a dream; that the highest hope even of the best of mankind is to survive for a time as a memory and an influence in the minds and conduct of others, after having ceased to be real and personal beings; that the only form in which the aspiration after immortality can be rationally cherished is that which the greatest of contemporary novelists and among the greatest of contemporary poets has expressed in the words:--

"O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.... This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow."

It is as true, then, as ever it was, that the world by wisdom knows not God. The advantages which the eighteen Christian centuries have brought us only make more manifest the world's inability by its own wisdom to know God. The longer the trial has lasted, the more manifest has it become that God's revelation of Himself is indispensable--is what man can provide no substitute for. The philosophy which sets itself in opposition to revelation--which professes to supply in another and better way the spiritual wants to which revelation responds--which aims at constructing a religion out of the conclusions of science--is a mournful failure. The only religious constructions which it has been able to raise, even with all the scientific resources of the nineteenth century at its command, are simply monuments of human folly.

This is just what was to be expected; for apart from special Divine teaching, apart from special Divine revelation, man cannot truly know God, as a sinful being needs to know Him. Apart, for example, from the revelation which God has made of Himself in Christ, the mind cannot possibly attain to a sincere and well-grounded conviction even of that primary truth on which all the perfection of religion and all the happiness and hopes of mankind depend--the truth that God is really a Father, with all a Father's love, to the children of men. There are manifold signs or evidences of God's goodness and bounty in creation and providence, but, unless seen in the light reflected on them from redemption, they fall far short of a complete proof of God's cherishing fatherly love to sinful men. In the light of the Cross it is otherwise; the man who looks at the works of creation in that light will unhesitatingly and with full reason say, "My Father made them all," and will easily and clearly trace in all the dealings of providence a Father's hand guiding His children. Suppose, however, that blessed light not shining or shut out, and that creation and providence are before us in no other light than their own,--what then? What can creation and providence teach us about God?

Substantially this only: that He has vast power, since He has created and sustains and controls the whole of this mighty universe; wondrous wisdom, since He has arranged everything so well and directs everything so well; and a goodness corresponding to His power and wisdom, since a beneficent purpose may be detected underlying all His works of creation and pervading the course of providence. I cannot suppose that any one will seriously maintain that creation and providence teach us more than that God is thus powerful and wise and good; and fully granting that they teach us all this, if any one mean by God being the Father of men no more than that He is as good as He is powerful and wise, and that His power and wisdom have been so employed on behalf of men that good gifts meet them at every step, I readily agree with him that creation and providence are sufficient to show God to be a Father in that sense and to that extent.

But is there nothing more, nothing higher than this, implied in fatherhood among men? Unquestionably there is. Love in the form of mere goodness is far from the noblest and most distinctive quality in a human father's heart; nay, there is no true fatherliness of heart at all in a man in whom there is nothing better than that. One can, by an effort of imagination, indeed, conceive a man to have children so absolutely innocent and happy, and so perfectly guarded from all possibility of evil and suffering, that love in the form of goodness or kindness would be the only kind of love he could show them; but would his fatherly love be ever really tested in that case? Could he ever show the deeper, the truly distinctive feelings of a father's heart--those we so often see manifested in the toils, the hardships, the dangers, the sacrifices of wealth, comfort, and even life, which parents undertake and endure for their children? Certainly not. Apply this to God. In what sense is He a Father? In what sense has He fatherly love? Among the angels this question could have no place, for they were such perfectly innocent and happy children that love in the form of goodness was all they required--all that could be shown to them. And it would have been the same with men also, if they had not fallen. But as soon as sin, suffering, and death invaded earth, and seized on man's body and soul, and help or healing there was none for him in any creature, the most awful of questions for the human race came to be, whether or not God was a Father in the full meaning of that term, or, in other words, whether or not He had a love which, in order to save men, would submit to humiliation, suffering, sacrifice?

Now that is what I say creation and providence cannot prove. Point to anything in creation or to anything in ordinary providence which you can show to have _cost_ God anything. You can easily point to thousands and thousands of things and events which you may justly conclude to be signs or gifts of God's goodness; but can you point to one thing in creation, one event in ordinary providence, which you can seriously maintain to come from a self-sacrificing love such as a father displays when he rushes into a house in flames, or throws himself into a raging flood, to save the life of his child at the risk of his own? If you cannot, you fail to prove God a Father in the sense I mean. And in that sense, which is the true sense, there seems to me no possibility of proving God a Father from creation and providence, apart from redemption.

Wherein is it that both fail? Obviously in this, that they can show no traces of sacrifice on God's part. But it is just here that the revelation of redemption comes in. God, in the unspeakable gift of His Son, shows us a power of sacrifice infinitely above anything known among men--an intensity of tenderest fatherly affection of which the strongest fatherly affection on earth is but a pale and feeble reflection; and Christ in His incarnation, life, sufferings, and death, reveals to us not merely the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God, but the very depths, if we may so speak, of His heart as a Father, enabling us to feel without a doubt that now indeed are we the sons of God. Nothing but a special revelation, however, could thus unveil and disclose God. The natural reason could not thus discern Him by its unaided power. And yet it is only in the knowledge of God as a Father that the soul can either discern or realise its true destiny.

There are many other precious truths set before us in the Gospel which we might in like manner show to be at once most necessary for human guidance, and inaccessible to unaided human research. We shall not, however, dwell on them or even enumerate them. The entire problem of our present and future salvation is beyond our powers of solution. The light of nature and the works of creation and providence cannot show man a way of reconciliation to God. No man by mere human wisdom, by any searching into the secrets of nature or providence, can find that out. Mere human wisdom is utter folly here; and if man may be wise at all in this connection, he must confess his natural folly, the powerlessness of his own reason, and must consent to be guided by the wisdom of God--or, in other words, to accept Christ, who is the wisdom of God to us for salvation, who is God's solution of the problem of our salvation. The only real wisdom possible to man must, from the very nature and necessity of the case, be the wisdom of renouncing his own wisdom. If he say, I shall solve this awful problem for myself, without help from any one, then he in his wisdom is a most manifest fool, whose folly will ruin him; but if he have the candour to confess his own folly, to admit his own intellect powerless here, and to acknowledge the wisdom of God and acquiesce in His plan of salvation, then, in the very act of confessing himself foolish he is made wise, for Christ is made wisdom unto him.

The oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Socrates could not understand it, and yet he was unwilling to disbelieve the oracle, so he went about from one person reputed wise to another, in order to be able to say, "here is a wiser man than I am," or at least to find out what the oracle meant. He went to many, but he found that, while they in reality knew almost nothing that was worth knowing, they thought they knew a great deal, and were angry with one who tried to convince them of their ignorance. So that at last Socrates came to recognise that there was a truth in what had been said about him; to use nearly his own words,--"He left them, saying to himself, I am wiser than these men; for neither they nor I, it would seem, know anything valuable: but they, not knowing, fancy that they do know; I, as I really do not know, so I do not think that I know. I seem, therefore, to be in one small matter wiser than they." Now it is only the kind of spirit which in its degree and about less important matters was in Socrates--it is precisely that kind of spirit about the things which concern eternal life and peace, that can alone make a man wise unto salvation. The most ignorant person, provided he only know that he must renounce his own wisdom as foolishness--which on subjects pertaining to salvation it really is--and accept what is disclosed in Christ as to salvation, is infinitely wiser than the most able or learned man who trusts solely to his own wisdom apart from Christ's revealed work and will. Both of them are foolish and ignorant; but the one knows it, and, in consequence of knowing it, accepts Christ's plan of salvation, and is made a partaker of infinite wisdom--the other does not know it, and, thinking that he is wise while he is a fool, remains in his folly, and must bear its punishment.

And now I bring this course of lectures to a close. I trust that they may not have been found wholly without profit, through the blessing of Him who despises not even the smallest and most imperfect service, if humbly rendered to Him. I should rejoice to think that I had helped any one to hold, in such a time as the present, with a firmer and more intelligent grasp, the fundamental truth on which all religious faith must rest. Amen.

APPENDIX.

NOTE I., page 6.

NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

The Hindus regard the Vedas, the Parsees the Zend-Avesta, and the Mohammedans the Koran, as having been immediately and specially inspired. This means that they believe the spiritual truth contained in these books to belong to revealed religion, although it in reality is merely a portion of natural religion. The Greeks and Romans could not distinguish between nature and revelation, reason and faith, because ignorant of what we call revelation and faith. Without special revelation or inspiration the oriental and classical mind attained, however, to the possession of a very considerable amount of most precious religious truth. In all ages of the Christian Church there have been theologians who have traced at least the germinal principles of such truth to written or unwritten revelation; and probably few patristic or scholastic divines would have admitted that there was a knowledge of God and of His attributes and of His relations to the world which might be the object of a science distinct from, and independent of, revelation. This is quite consistent with what is also a fact--namely, that the vast majority of Christian writers have always acknowledged that "the light of nature and the works of creation and providence manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God," and that this general revelation is implied in the special revelation made at sundry times and divers manners and recorded in the Scriptures. The 'Theologia naturalis sive liber creaturum' of the Spanish physician, Raymond de Sebonde, who taught theology in the University of Toulouse during the earlier part of the fifteenth century, was, so far as I know, the first work which, proceeding on the principle that God has given us two books, the book of nature and the book of Scripture, confined itself to the interpretation of the former, merely indicating the mutual relations of natural and revealed religion. Faustus Socinus was one of the first distinctly to maintain that there was no such thing as natural religion--no knowledge of God attainable except from Scripture: see his 'De Auctoritate Scripturæ Sacræ.' A conviction of the importance of natural theology spread very rapidly in the seventeenth century. This contributed to awaken an interest in the various religions of the world, and thus led to the rise of what may be called Comparative Theology, although more generally designated the Philosophy of Religion. Its origin is to be sought in the attempts made to prove that the principles of natural theology were to be found in all religions. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's 'De Religione Gentilium,' published in 1663, was one of the earliest and most characteristic attempts of the kind. From that time to the present the study of religions has proceeded at varying rates of progress, but without interruption, and has at length begun to be prosecuted according to the rules of that comparative method which has, in the words of Mr Freeman, "carried light and order into whole branches of human knowledge which before were shrouded in darkness and confusion."

The eighteenth century was the golden age of natural theology. The deists both of England and France endeavoured to exalt natural theology at the expense of positive theology by representing the former as the truth of which the latter was the perversion. "All religions in the world," said Diderot, "are merely sects of natural religion." The prevalent opinion of the freethinkers of his time could not have been more accurately expressed. It was just what his predecessors in England meant by describing Christianity as "a republication of natural religion," and by maintaining that it was "as old as the creation." The wisest opponents of the deists, and thoughtful Christian writers in general--the adherents of the moderate and rational theology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--strove, on the other hand, to show that natural theology was in reality presupposed by revelation, and that it should carry the mind onwards to the acceptance of revelation. But there were some who undertook to maintain that there was no such thing as natural theology; that reason of itself can teach us absolutely nothing about God or our duties towards Him. The Hutchinsonians, for example, whose best representatives, besides the founder, were Bishop Horne of Norwich, and William Jones, curate of Nayland, believed that all knowledge of religion and morals, and even the chief truths of physical science, ought to be drawn from the Bible. Dr Ellis, in his treatise entitled 'The Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature' (1743), laboured to prove that neither the being of a God nor any other principle of religion could be legitimately deduced from the study of the phenomena of the universe. He argued on the assumption that the senses are the only natural inlets to knowledge. The late Archbishop Magee adopted his views on this subject. One of the most widely known expositions and defences of the theory is that contained in the 'Theological Institutes' (1823) of the eminent Wesleyan divine, Richard Watson. In order to establish that all our religious knowledge is derived from special revelation, he employs all the usual arguments of scepticism against the proofs of theism and the principles of reason on which they rest. In the Roman Catholic Church, scepticism as to reason and the light of nature has often been combined with dogmatism as to the authority of revelation and the Church. In the system of what is called the theocratic school may be seen the result to which attempts to establish the certitude of authority by destroying the credit of human reason naturally lead. It is a system of which I have endeavoured to give some account in my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' pp. 139-154.

The fact on which I have insisted in the latter part of the lecture--the fact that theism has come to mankind in and through revelation--has caused some altogether to discard the division of religion into natural and revealed. They pronounce it to be a distinction without a difference, and attribute to it sundry evil consequences. It has led, they think, on the one hand, to depreciation of revelation--and, on the other, to jealousy of reason: some minds looking upon Christianity as at best a republication of the religion of nature, in which all that is most essential and valuable is "as old as the creation;" while others see in natural religion a rival of revealed religion, and would exclude reason from the religious sphere as much as possible. The distinction is, however, real, and the errors indicated are not its legitimate consequences. If there be a certain amount of knowledge about God and spiritual things to be derived from nature--from data furnished by perception and consciousness, and accessible to the whole human race,--while there is also a certain knowledge about Him which can only have been communicated through a special illumination or manifestation--through prophecy, or miracle, or incarnation,--the distinction must be retained. It is no real objection to it to urge that in a sense even natural religion may be regarded as revealed religion, since in a sense the whole universe is a revelation of God, a manifestation of His name, a declaration of His glory. That is a truth, and, in its proper place, a very important truth, but it is not relevant here: it is perfectly consistent with the belief that God has not manifested Himself merely in nature, but also in ways which require to be carefully distinguished from the manifestation in nature. In like manner, the distinction is not really touched by showing that revealed religion has embodied and endorsed the truths of natural religion, or by proving that even what is most special in revelation is in a sense natural. These are both impregnable positions. The Bible is to a large extent an inspired republication of the spiritual truths which are contained in the physical creation, and in the reason, conscience, and history of man. But this does not disprove that it is something more. The highest and most special revelation of God--His revelation in Jesus Christ--was also the fullest realisation of the true nature of man. But this is no reason why we should not distinguish between the general and the special in that revelation. We can only efface the distinction by reducing Christ to a mere man, or confounding God with man in a pantheistic manner.

It has been further objected to the division of religion into natural and revealed that it is unhistorical, that natural religion is only revealed religion disguised and diluted--Christianity without Christ. It never existed, we are told, apart from revelation, and never would have existed but for revelation. But this very objection, it will be observed, implies that natural religion is not identical with revealed religion--is not revealed religion pure and simple--is not Christianity with Christ. Why is this? Is it not because revealed religion contains more than natural religion--what reason cannot read in the physical universe or human soul? Besides, while the principles of natural religion were presented in revelation in a much clearer form than in any merely human systems, and while there can be no reasonable doubt that but for revelation our knowledge of them would be greatly more defective than it is, to maintain that they had no existence or were unknown apart from revelation, is manifestly to set history at defiance. Were there no truths of natural religion in the works of Plato, Cicero, and Seneca? Is there any heathen religion or heathen philosophy in which there are not truths of natural religion?

The belief in a natural religion which is independent alike of special revelation and of positive or historical religions has been argued to have originated in the same condition of mind as the belief in a "state of nature" entertained by a few political theorists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This can only be done by confounding natural religion with an imaginary patriarchal religion, which is, of course, inexcusable. Natural religion is analogous, not to the state of nature, but to the law of nature of the jurists. Natural religion is the foundation of all theology, as the law of nature is the foundation of all ethical and political science; and just as belief in the law of nature is perfectly independent of the theory of a state of nature, so the belief in natural religion has no connection whatever with any theory of patriarchal or primitive religion.

There is a well-known essay by Professor Jowett on the subject of this note in the second volume of his 'St Paul's Epistles,' &c.

NOTE II., page 9.

INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON MORALITY.

The assertion of Mr Bentham and of Mr J. S. Mill that much has been written on the truth but little on the usefulness of religion, is quite inaccurate. Most of the apologists of religion have set forth the proof that it serves to sustain and develop personal and social morality; and, from the time of Bayle downwards, not a few of its assailants have undertaken to show that it is practically useless or even hurtful. But Bentham may have been the first who proposed to estimate the utility of religion apart from the consideration of its truth. The notion was characteristically Benthamite. It was likewise far too irrational to be capable of being consistently carried out or applied. The work compiled by Mr Grote from the papers of Mr Bentham, and published under the name of Philip Beauchamp--'Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind'--and Mr Mill's 'Essay on the Utility of Religion,' are, in almost every second page, as well as in their general tenor, attacks not merely on the utility but on the truth of religion.

The former of these works is an attempt to show that natural religion has done scarcely any good, and produced no end of evils--inflicting, so runs the indictment, unprofitable suffering, imposing useless privations, impressing undefined terrors, taxing pleasure by the infusion of preliminary scruples and subsequent remorse, creating factitious antipathies, perverting the popular opinion, corrupting moral sentiment, producing aversion to improvement, disqualifying the intellectual faculties for purposes useful in this life, suborning unwarranted belief, depraving the temper, and, finally, creating a particular class of persons incurably opposed to the interests of humanity. The author makes out that religion is responsible for this catalogue of mischiefs, by two simple devices. First, he defines religion as "the belief in the existence of an almighty Being, by whom pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind during an infinite and future state of existence," or, in other words, he so defines religion as to exclude from the idea of God the thought of moral goodness, righteousness, and holiness. He even insists that the God of natural religion can only be conceived of as "a capricious and insane despot," and bases his argumentation on this assumption. Dr Caselles, who has translated the treatise into French, and prefaced it by an interesting introduction, informs us that the argumentation is not applicable to the new, but only to the old theism. It is historically certain, however, that the "old" theism of Jeremy Bentham and his friends never existed outside of their own imaginations. It is likewise certain that a lamb would acquire a very bad character if it were by definition identified with a wolf, and credited with all that creature's doings. The second device is "a declaration of open war against the principle of separating the abuses of a thing from its uses." The only excuse which can be given for this declaration of a most unjust war is, that Mr Bentham was able completely to misunderstand the obvious meaning of the principle which he assailed. That a book so unfair and worthless should have produced on the mind of Mr J. S. Mill, even when a boy of sixteen, the impression which he describes in his Autobiography would have been inexplicable, had we not known the character of his education.

Mr Mill's own essay is rather strange. It begins with six pages of general observations, which are meant to show that it is a necessary and very laudable undertaking to attempt to prove that the belief in religion, considered as a mere persuasion apart from the question of its truth, may be advantageously dispensed with, any benefits which flow from the belief being local, temporary, and such as may be otherwise obtained, without the very large amount of alloy always contained in religion. Yet we are told that "an argument for the utility of religion is an appeal to unbelievers to induce them to practise a well-meant hypocrisy; or to semi-believers to make them avert their eyes from what might possibly shake their unstable belief; or, finally, to persons in general to abstain from expressing any doubts they may feel, since a fabric of immense importance to mankind is so insecure at its foundations, that men must hold their breath in its neighbourhood for fear of blowing it down." An argument for the utility of religion is "moral bribery." An argument for its uselessness is highly to be commended. Mr Mill further tells us that "little has been written, at least in the way of discussion or controversy, concerning the usefulness of religion;" and likewise, that "religious writers have not neglected to celebrate to the utmost the advantage both of religion in general and of their own religious faith in particular." The inference must be, that what religious writers urge for the utility of religion is not to be reckoned as reasoning; that only what writers like Mr Bentham and Mr Mill urge against its utility is to be thus regarded. The charity of this view is capped by the assertion that "the whole of the prevalent metaphysics of the present century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favour of religion;" an assertion which is made amusing by following a sentence in which Mr Mill speaks of "the intolerant zeal" of intuitionists. After his general considerations, he professes to inquire what religion does for society, but in reality never enters on the investigation. He devotes two pages to insisting on "the enormous influence of authority on the human mind;" three to emphasising "the tremendous power of education;" and ten to enlarging on "the power of public opinion." He might as relevantly have dwelt on the influence of reason, speech, the press, machinery, clothes, marriage, and thousands of other things which undoubtedly affect the intellectual and moral condition of society. It is as unreasonable to infer that religion is useless because authority, education, and public opinion are powerful, as it would be to infer that the fire in a steam-engine might be dispensed with because water is necessary. Any person who assumes, as Mr Mill assumed, that authority, education, or public opinion may be contrasted with religion--who does not see, as Mr Mill did not see, that all these powers are correlatives, which necessarily intermingle with, imply, and supplement one another--is, _ipso facto_, unable intelligently to discuss the question, What does religion do for society? In the second part of his essay, Mr Mill ought, in order to have kept his promise, to have considered what influence religion in the sense of belief in and love of God is naturally calculated to exert on the character and conduct of the individual; but instead of this he applies himself to the very different task of attempting to prove that "the idealisation of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made, is capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers." He forgets to inquire whether there is any opposition between "the idealisation of our earthly life" and "belief respecting the unseen powers," or whether, on the contrary, religious belief is not the chief source of the idealisation of our earthly life. That this logical error is as serious as it is obvious, appears from the fact that ten years later Mr Mill himself confessed that "it cannot be questioned that the undoubting belief of the real existence of a Being who realises our own best ideas of perfection, and of our being in the hands of that Being as the ruler of the universe, gives an increase of force to our aspirations after goodness beyond what they can receive from reference to a merely ideal conception" (Theism, p. 252). His proof that the worship of God is inferior to the religion of humanity rests mainly on these three assertions: (1) That the former, "what now goes by the name of religion," "operates merely through the feeling of self-interest;" (2) That "it is impossible that any one who habitually thinks, and who is unable to blunt his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able without misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as this planet and the life of its inhabitants;" and (3), That "mankind can perfectly well do without the belief in a heaven." "It seems to me not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, a happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea; and that human nature, though pleased with the present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish to preserve." On this last point more mature reflection brought him to a different and wiser conclusion (see Theism, pp. 249, 250).

Those who wish to study the important subject of the relations of religion and morality will find the following references useful: the last chapter of M. Janet's 'La Morale;' the _étude_ on "La Morale indépendante" in M. Caro's 'Problèmes de Morale Sociale;' many articles and reviews in M. Renouvier's 'Critique Philosophique;' Martensen's 'Christian Ethics,' §§ 5-14; O. Pfleiderer's 'Moral und Religion;' Luthardt's 'Apologetic Lectures on the Moral Truths of Christianity;' and Bradley's 'Ethical Studies,' pp. 279-305.

NOTE III., page 18.

ETHICS OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY.

Much has been written regarding the spirit and temper in which religious truth should be pursued and defended. In a large number of the general treatises both of apologetic and systematic theology, the subject is considered, and not a few essays, lectures, &c., have been specially devoted to it. The greater portion of this literature may, I believe, be forgotten without loss, but there is a part of it which will well repay perusal. The "Oratio de recto Theologi zelo" in the first volume of the 'Opuscula' of Werenfels, is worthy of that tolerant and philosophical divine. Archbishop Leighton's 'Exhortations to Students' exhale from every line a heavenly ether and fragrance. It will be long before Herder's 'Letters on the Study of Theology' are out of date.

Dr Chalmers attached high value to the distinction between the ethics of theology and the objects of theology, and expatiated with great eloquence on the duty which is laid upon men by the probability or even the imagination of a God (Nat. Theol., B. i. ch. i. ii.) "Man is not to blame, if an atheist, because of the want of proof. But he is to blame, if an atheist, because he has shut his eyes. He is not to blame that the evidence for a God has not been seen by him, if no such evidence there were within the field of his observation. But he is to blame if the evidence have not been seen, because he turned away his attention from it. That the question of a God may be unresolved in his mind, all he has to do is to refuse a hearing to the question. He may abide without the conviction of a God, if he so choose. But this his choice is matter of condemnation. To resist God after that He is known, is criminality towards Him; but to be satisfied that He should remain unknown, is like criminality towards Him. There is a moral perversity of spirit with him who is willing, in the midst of many objects of gratification, that there should not be one object of gratitude. It is thus that, even in the ignorance of God, there may be a responsibility towards God. The Discerner of the heart sees whether, for the blessings innumerable wherewith he has strewed the path of every man, He be treated like the unknown benefactor who was diligently sought, or like the unknown benefactor who was never cared for. In respect at least of desire after God, the same distinction of character may be observed between one man and another--whether God be wrapt in mystery, or stand forth in full development to our world. Even though a mantle of deepest obscurity lay over the question of His existence, this would not efface the distinction between the piety on the one hand which laboured and aspired after Him, and the impiety upon the other which never missed the evidence that it did not care for, and so grovelled in the midst of its own sensuality and selfishness. The eye of a heavenly witness is upon all these varieties; and thus, whether it be darkness or whether it be dislike which hath caused a people to be ignorant of God, there is with Him a clear principle of judgment that He can extend even to the outfields of atheism."--(Pp. 72, 73.)

The Rev. Alexander Leitch, in the First Part of his 'Ethics of Theism' (1868), discusses in a thoughtful and suggestive manner the following subjects: the reality and universality of the antithesis between truth and error, the legitimate dependence in all cases of belief on knowledge, the responsibility of man for his whole system of belief, the distinction between mystery and contradiction, the distinction between speculative and practical knowledge, the distinction between certainty and probability, the standard of morality, and the claims of reason and faith.

Mr Venn's 'Hulsean Lectures' for 1869 "are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into some of their consequences, certain characteristics by which the attainment of religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief upon most other subjects. These characteristics consist in the multiplicity of the sources from which the evidence for religious belief is derived, and the fact that our emotions contribute their share towards producing conviction."

What I have said in the text ought not to be understood as implying any doubt that men are largely responsible for their beliefs. This I accept as an indubitable truth, although there is great room for difference of opinion as to the limits of the responsibility; but it is a truth which no one party in a discussion has a right to urge as against another party. It is a law over all disputants, and is abused when severed from tolerance and charity. Perhaps it has never been better expounded and enforced than in Dr Pusey's 'Responsibility of the Intellect in Matters of Faith' (1873).

That religious belief is in a great measure conditioned and determined by character is implied in the whole argument of my third lecture. In this fact lies the main reason why the highest evidence may not produce belief even where there is no conscious dishonesty in those who reject it. A person desirous of working himself fully into the truth in this matter, will find excellent thoughts and suggestions in Dr Newman's 'Fifteen Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, between A.D. 1826 and 1843,' and in Principal Shairp's 'Culture and Religion.'

NOTE IV., page 23.

TRADITIVE THEORY OF RELIGION.

Mr Fairbairn makes the following remarks on the theory which traces religion to a primitive revelation: "Although often advanced in the supposed interests of religion, the principle it assumes is most irreligious. If man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he must have what Schelling happily termed 'an original atheism of consciousness.' Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the nature of man--must be implanted from without. The theory that would derive man's religion from a revelation is as bad as the theory that would derive it from distempered dreams. Revelation may satisfy or rectify, but cannot create, a religious capacity or instinct; and we have the highest authority for thinking that man was created 'to seek the Lord, if haply he might feel after and find Him'--the finding being by no means dependent on a written or traditional word. If there was a primitive revelation, it must have been--unless the word is used in an unusual and misleading sense--either written or oral. If written, it could hardly be primitive, for writing is an art, a not very early acquired art, and one which does not allow documents of exceptional value to be easily lost. If it was oral, then either the language for it was created or it was no more primitive than the written. Then an oral revelation becomes a tradition, and a tradition requires either a special caste for its transmission, becomes therefore its property, or must be subjected to multitudinous changes and additions from the popular imagination--becomes, therefore, a wild commingling of broken and bewildering lights. But neither as documentary nor traditional can any traces of a primitive revelation be discovered, and to assume it is only to burden the question with a thesis which renders a critical and philosophic discussion alike impossible."--Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History, pp. 14, 15.

There is an examination of the same theory in the learned and able work of Professor Cocker of Michigan on 'Christianity and Greek Philosophy' (1875). He argues: 1. "That it is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the wellbeing of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as tradition." 2. "That the theory is altogether incompetent to explain the _universality_ of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas." 3. "That a verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence purely passive and utterly unfurnished with any _a priori_ ideas or necessary laws of thought."--Pp. 86-96.

A good history of the traditive theory of the diffusion of religion is a desideratum in theological literature.

NOTE V., page 29.

NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY.

The truth that social development ought to combine and harmonise permanence and progress, liberty and authority, the rights of the individual and of the community, has been often enforced and illustrated. The earnestness with which Comte did so in both of his chief works is well known. A philosopher of a very different stamp, F.