or saying, as it said to

"where art thou, Adam?” Cain "where is thy brother?"-to make you feel that there is a Witness and a Judge above you. Conscience is, as it is sometimes called, the voice of God in the soul. No otherwise can we account for its utterance. It is an echo from the sky. It is a feeling, whose counterpart is the belief in a God.

And then, again, all nature addresses this moral conviction in full accord and confirmation. The testimony of nature, indeed, is not all obvious; it lies in the far distant heavens, and in the embosomed secrets of the earth — in the mysteries of vegetable and animal life; and philosophy alone can fully unfold it. Much, indeed, is obvious, but much more is not. To the student of nature, however, are opened and unfolded, on every side, infinite depths and wonders of design. If the solid world were one vast piece of mechanism, and we saw it-filled with powers, wheels, levers and pulleys all working for the production of streams and trees and flowers and herbage on its surface; or if by some wonder-working power, the mountains were torn from their bases, and sent revolving round the earth, beautiful, beneficent, and never clashing; if all were thus brought near and made thus obvious; if we saw the working beneath us, and heard those spheres above, as they swept their sounding way around us all would not exhibit such stupendous proofs of design as now fill the surrounding universe. But what is design? It not merely proves it implies a designer. The one idea is counterpart of the other is bound up with it, and cannot be separated from it. You might as well talk about a deed without a doer, as about design without a designer.

But I must say something further of the nature of this

conviction. Some persons of late have taken upon them,

to repudiate this argument from design argument in the case.

and indeed all

They say we have an intuition of God, or we have no knowledge of him in any way.*

--

But what now is the province of intuition? How far does it extend? What facts does it embrace? I cannot tell what other men's intuition is, but I will tell you what mine is. I see - that is, I perceive with certainty, what I experience no more. My intuition embraces the facts of my consciousness nothing beyond. But my experience is not God. The facts of my consciousness are not God. And therefore to say that I have an immediate intuition of God, is an absolute contradiction of ideas; it is to use language without any intelligible meaning.

This conclusion can be evaded only by setting up a new definition of intuition. If intuition be equivalent to consciousness, it is plain that, strictly speaking, I can be conscious of nothing but what passes within me. If intuition refers to what is self-evident or certain, we are brought to the same conclusion. For nothing is certain to me, nothing is self-evident, but what I perceive, feel, know in myself. The "first truths" as they are calledthat is to say, the axioms, whether of Morals, or of the Ma

* I do not know how distinctly this position has been taken in the discussions of the day. Certainly the argument from design is rejected by some, and, I think, all argument; and the only conceivable alternative to my mind, is to say that the being of a God, is intuitively seen. Many indeed say that their belief in God did not come from any argument, and this very truly; for it came, doubtless, from education. But the question is, what is the proper philosophical basis of this truth?

thematics, are of this character. That benevolence is right; that two and two make four; that the whole is more than a part these axioms are nothing but descriptions of the state of my own mind. And by this circlethat is, by the circle of my experience, to my apprehension, all absolute certainty is bounded.

I have indeed the fullest belief in things out of this circle. I have the fullest belief in the being of a God. But I cannot say that I have an intuition of God. The truth that he is, is not given me by consciousness, nor is it any way a self-evident truth. The being of a God is correlative to my consciousness, is implied by my consciousness, but it is surely no part of my consciousness.

In short, between my intuition and the being of a God, there is a step of evidence. What I perceive in myself, what I see around me too, evinces by the plainest reasoning the existence of a moral and intelligent Creator. This old way of proceeding, this process of reasoning, is held by some to be quite unsatisfactory. They say it proves that there is a Creator of this world, but it does not prove that he is God: this Creator may have been himself created. Grant it for argument's sake. Then this chain of causes must at length bring us to the Supreme Cause. But this hypercriticism does not disturb me. The Being who made me and made the world, to me is God. The rejectors of this way of reasoning, of the logical method, call it logic-grinding, and material philosophy, and I know not what; and claim to be in possession of a more spiritual philosophy. If they had said of a more mystical, I must think they would have adopted a more appropriate word. For in truth, they ought to maintain, as I conceive, that they have discovered a new faculty in the mind

- unknown to all former philosophy: and that is a faculty which takes as certain a cognizance of things without the mind, as consciousness takes of things in the mind. Intuitive seeing with them, instead of being confined within the modest bounds assigned to it by all former philosophy, penetrates through the universe and reaches the Supreme Cause, at a glance.

was ever a word

But not to dwell upon these novel speculations and discoveries is not the whole history of the human mind on this subject the history, that is to say, of philosophy, of theology, of Theism - on our side in this matter. If the being of a God is a self-evident truth, why has there been any attempt to prove it? How, upon this hypothesis, is Atheism possible? Yet it is possible, and many books have been written to refute it. How would this be, if the truth in question were a matter of intuition and of certainty! Were any books ever written written to prove the mathematical or the moral axioms? No, there have been scholastic questions, as to whether they are innate or not, but their real existence in the human mind, has never been doubted. Has Theism stood before the world in this light so that a book or an argument to prove it, would have been thought ridiculous? Surely not. The point is susceptible of doubt; therefore not self-evident. And I am confident that if you put the question to the bosom of the loftiest transcendental philosopher, he will say that he wishes he were more certain of this truth than he is.

I admit, and certainly I do it with no reluctance, but with the highest joy and gratitude, that it is a truth which comes the nearest possible to certainty. I want no formal array of proofs, no nice metaphysical arguments, and

I freely consent to their banishment from philosophy. Conscience in me refers to a lawgiver; design around me, implies a Designer, even as action implies an actor. This to me, though not, strictly speaking, philosophical certainty, is overwhelming, all-satisfying evidence.

II. Let us now proceed to consider the subject of revealed religion.

And here, there are two classes of views to be considered; first, the views of those who seem to us to mistake or to deny its distinctive character, and secondly, of those who, on account of the errors which have been engrafted upon it, reject it altogether. The first belongs to the great German School of Naturalism; which has found a few disciples among ourselves; the second, to avowed infidelity.

In entering upon a brief examination of the first ground, it is important to state in the outset what we understand by revealed religion. Confining our views to Christianity, then, as the point of chief interest we do not say, in the first place, that every word in the record was suggested by an unerring inspiration, or that any word was. Meaning now by inspiration, not an afflatus, nor a poetic enthusiasm, nor mental vigor, nor any other vague thing which it is fashionable of late with a few writers to call inspiration-but meaning a special guidance from above, we do not conceive that it extended to words at all. In the second place, we do not mean that every idea set down in the New Testament, or uttered by our Saviour, was revealed. That God exists, that he is a good being, that we ought to be good, that rectitude consists in love, pity, piety these things could not be revealed; because, they belong, as we have shown, to the natural, primal re