Being is natural to man, is a conclusion established by the testimony of history (see Cudworth's Intellectual System), and is supported by the most recent inquiries regarding uncivilized life. On the last-named subject see specially, Tylor's Primitive Culture, 2 vols., 1870. An outline of the results I have given in the Appendix to third Edition of The Philosophy of the Infinite, 1872. To represent the religious beliefs of savage tribes as the result of logical processes, is the least satisfactory suggestion which can be made. On the admission that the belief is natural to the human mind, it is possible to find a general harmony of ascertained facts. The conception, being vague, may gather around it additions suggested by the circumstances of the people. These additions may accordingly be different in the history of different tribes, and may even fail in self-consistency. But it is the common original idea of a Great Ruler which is the explanation of the common features of belief and religious practice throughout the world. In harmony with this view, it is obvious that the idea of God becomes more comprehensive and self-consistent in all its features, as a people advances in intellectual activity.

9. The belief in the Divine existence, which is first accepted simply as a determining force in practical life, is afterwards accepted as the only adequate solution of the problem of finite existence. As already suggested, the raising of this problem belongs to a period of philosophic thought. And in seeking a solution of it, the existence of a self-sufficient First Cause is accepted as adequate, and as the only adequate solution. The inquiry as to the origin of known existence thus becomes the test of the harmony of our belief with recognised facts. What is thereby accepted has new significance, being no longer a vague belief,-no longer personal experience of the force of some natural impulse,—but a clear discovery of the fitness of this belief to meet all the demands of intellect in its search for causes. It is thus that the natural belief comes to have associated with it a fuller, clearer conception of the nature

of the Supreme Being. In this way, also, the conception receives its true scientific place and application. From these considerations, it appears that the legitimate use of a discursive process, is not in an attempt to reach the fact of the Divine existence as a logical conclusion, but in testing the harmony between the belief and the facts of existence. This latter use of the reasoning process is in accordance with the scientific methods followed in all departments of investigation. When the mind makes inquiry as to the existence of a Being, Selfsufficient and Supreme, it is certainly more in accordance with the limits of logical proof, that it should advance from belief. to confirmatory evidence, than that it should attempt to pass, by its own strength, from restricted existence to the transcendent grandeur of Infinite Being.-Mahan's Nat. Theol., 1867.

10. Belief in the Divine existence is confirmed as the range of discovery extends our knowledge of the universe. With this belief given, the argument from design rises into a conspicuous place as an argument confirmatory. And as the harmony of the universe becomes more manifest in the correlation of forces, and the relation of mind to action, the confirmatory argument gains in proportion. Here also it is that the contradictions and insufficiency of conflicting theories become most apparent. To account for the order of the universe is the grand perplexity of every theory which attempts a philosophy of finite existence from any lower point of view than that recognised in the existence of an intelligent First Cause.

11. The whole of the earlier conclusions in Moral Philosophy, as to personal obligation and responsibility, find an ultimate resting-place in the recognition of the Deity as moral ruler, source of moral good. There is no teaching more mischievous than that which makes human belief in God the first regenerating power in human society, and God himself second.'-Essays, Theol. and Lit., by R. H. Hutton, 1. 5, London, 1871. Any theory of existence lower than the Theistic, leaves the essential features of our moral nature

unexplained. The tendency under such a theory is to depreciate the facts of moral life which give character to the great problem of experience. Evidence of this appears in all the development theories of moral nature. We have seen obligation reduced to the strongest proclivity, and responsibility to punishment. Such representations fail in their appreciation of the facts to be explained. On the other hand, relying on the basis of necessary truth, we have seen in the nature of moral law, the source of personal obligation, and of individual responsibility. These correlated doctrines of Ethical science may be admitted to have logical consistency and coherence in systematic form, and yet may be regarded as wanting in living practical force. But when that which springs from necessary laws of morality finds its resting-place in the government of a Supreme Ruler, the vital relations of the whole order of moral truth, law, and activity, become apparent on the grandest scale. If oughtness spring from the application of law, it is seen to be enforced by the Sovereign Ruler; and if responsibility for personal conduct flow directly from obligation to act, we discover now the Judgment Seat before which the response must be given. Even if Responsibility mean liability to punishment, narrow as this view is, it finds coherence only in the acknowledgment of a Judge, vested with authority and power to inflict what is due. If we venture further to gaze upon the complications and terrible mysteries of life, and attempt to rise above the dead level where we speak only of the imperfection which necessarily clings to finite existence; if, with the instincts of moral life, we venture to anticipate that Justice shall triumph, and the loftiest characteristics of man gain ascendency in his life, the rational warrant for such expectation is found only in the recognition of the Supreme One, ruling in absolute justice and purity over the hosts of intelligent creatures.

12. Belief in the Divine existence harmonizes with the religious instinct of our nature. That men reason themselves

into religious feeling, is a proposition which could not claim. serious attention. But that men recognise religious feeling to be reasonable, and that all the more clearly in proportion as they reflect profoundly on the higher relations of life, is a position more in harmony with the facts of experience. At the same time it must be allowed that reasoning of this kind is more the exercise of disciplined minds than of men generally, and partakes somewhat more of the character of philosophic thought than of what might fitly be called religious thought. Religious instinct seems, therefore, the term to describe the source of that widespread religious life which appears in our world under a multitude of forms. When subjected to analytic investigation, it is distinctly marked by two prominent features, first, the sense of dependence on higher power which is the spontaneous experience of a nature sensible of its inherent weakness, and subjection to governing forces in the universe; and, second, reverence of feeling for the perfection belonging to the Absolute Being. These two are the essential elements of the religious instinct, swayed by the fundamental belief in the Divine existence. The harmony of faith with such feeling is complete. Only in such faith can a harmony be found. Without it there is the saddening, crushing sense of hopeless subjection to inexorable forces which in mystery sway the universe, regardless of intensest human emotion. Without this faith, a capacity of reverence is a fountain of disappointment, finding no higher object towards which it may direct its force than is discovered among men of wide experience and lofty disposition who die by our side. But with faith in Deity, dependence rises to trust, attended by peace the most profound which the human spirit can reach, and by reverence which finds in an object of infinite excellence an exhaustless source of satisfaction, attracting towards the loftiest attainment.

CHAPTER II.

THE MATERIALISTIC (ATHEISTIC) THEORY.

HAVING indicated the nature and value of the first logical alternative which lies open to us in seeking to account for the origin of finite existence, I pass to the consideration of conflicting theories, taking first the opposite extreme, in the form of a thoroughgoing contradiction of the Theistic doctrine. The other two theories,-the Pantheistic and Polytheistic,as they do not involve a thoroughgoing contradiction, are mixed theories, and as such are wanting in self-consistency.

1. A purely Atheistic theory, being merely negative, proves nothing. Merely to utter a denial of the Divine existence is always possible; but such a denial is of no scientific value. Nor is there any logical worth in a plea of ignorance as to such a transcendent fact as the existence of an absolute but invisible ruler. We have seen that to argue from thought to existence is unwarrantable; much more unwarrantable is it to reason from ignorance to non-existence. Equally impossible is it to argue legitimately against the existence of an object. merely on the ground that no such existence is visible. Though one avenue of knowledge be closed against us, it does not therefore follow that other means of information are not open. A plea grounded on invisibility is only a specific form of the illegitimate argument from ignorance to nonexistence.