Introduction, pp. 57-60. " We can not think the divine attri- butes as in themselves they are, we can not think God without impiety, unless we also implicitly confess our impotence to think him worthily ; and if we should assert that God is as we think, or can affirm him to be, we actually blaspheme. For the Deity is adequately inconceivable, is adequately ineffable, since human thought and human language are equally incompetent to his in- finities/'— Sir William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, Ap- pendix, p. 692; and see also Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought, Lecture 3, Note 11 on that Lecture.
26. What argument for the being of a God may be derived from the Sense of Dependence which is common to all men ?
The religious instinct, which is one of the most universal and indestructible attributes of human nature, is constituted of two elements : 1st. an intimate and inseparable sense of dependence which always accompanies our self-consciousness ; and 2d, con- science, including a sense of moral accountability. " With the first development of consciousness there grows up, as part of it, the innate feeling that our life, natural and spiritual, is not in our own power to sustain or prolong ; that there is One above us on whom we are dependent, whose existence we learn and whose presence we realize by the same instinct of prayer." — Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought, p. 120. This sense of dependence has often, in the absence of knowledge, been prostituted to vari- ous superstitions, but its universal presence, under all forms of faith, proves the being of a God.
27. State the argument for the existence of God derived from Conscience.
Conscience is a universal and indestructible j>rinciple of human nature. It asserts, even when it is unable to enforce, its supreme authority, as the organ of an ultimate law, over all the active powers of the soul. Now, if there be no God, universal conscience must be a lie, since its right to command over inclination and passion can be derived only from a superior authority, whose right it is to reign. Conscience essentially involves a sense of moral accountability, and in the case of the transgressor a fearful
30 THE BEING OF GOD.
looking for of judgment. Hence the universal prevalence among men of expiatory sacrifices and penances. — Mansel, p. 122.
These two, a sense of dependence and of moral accountability, constituting the religious instinct universally prevalent among men, and proving that God must he a person, endowed with intel- ligence and sovereign and righteous will, give us our first conception of God, which is afterwards corroborated and enlarged by the study of his works and of his word. As these are the primary sources of our faith in God, so they exert immeasurably the most preva- lent influence in maintaining and enforcing that faith among men.
28. What is the Historical argument for the being of a God ?
Several arguments for the being of a God may be derived from history.
I. Men of all nations, in all ages of the world, differing among themselves in all respects susceptible of change, have pro- fessed and acted upon this belief. Man is as essentially a religious as he is a rational animal. Either the nature of man is a lie, or there is a God. Cicero says, " What nation is there, or what race of men which has not, without any previous instruction, some idea of the gods ? Now, that in which all men agree must neces- sarily be true."
II. The student of universal history will find evident traces of design running through and giving significance to the relative bear- ing of all events. God is as plainly in history as he is in creation.
III. History, as shown above (question 20), proves that the human race is of recent origin, and therefore has been created.
IY. Godliness has always worked beneficially for human na- ture, having, practically, " the promise of the life that now is." Every experiment of national Atheism has been morally, socially, and politically disastrous.
29. What is the argument for the being of a God derived from the phenomena of Scripture ?
The only way in which the existence of God can be known to us at all is by some revelation of himself. Nature and providence are as much revelations of God as Scripture ; and inspired Scrip- ture, miracles, and prophecy are as much his works, and more clearly manifest power, intelligence, goodness, and righteousness,
SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE. 31