that it cannot but see these things to be true. As we are bom with the sense of touch and sight, and take cognizance of their ap- propriate objects as soon as they are presented ; so we are born with the intellectual faculty of perceiving these primary truths as soon as they are presented.
In the third place, there are moral truths which the mind intu- itively recognizes as true. The essential distinction between right and wrong ; the obligation of virtue ; responsibility for character and conduct ; that sin deserves punishment ; are examples of this class of truths. No man needs to be taught them. No one seeks for further evidence of their being truths than that which is found in their nature.
There is another remark to be made in reference to the intui- tions of the mind. The power of intuitional perception is capable of being increased. It is in fact greater in one man than in other men. The senses of some persons are far more acute than those of others. The senses of hearing and touch are greatly exalted in the case of the blind. It is the same with the intellect. What is self-evident to one man, has to be proved to another. It is said that all the propositions of the First Book of Euclid were as plain at first sight to Newton as the axioms. The same is true in our moral and religious nature. The more that nature is purified and exalted, the clearer is its vision, and the wider the scope of its in- tuitions. It is not easy to see, therefore, why Sir William Hamil- ton should make simplicity a characteristic of intuitive truths. If a proposition be capable of resolution into simpler factors, it may still to a powerful intellect be seen as self-evidently true. What is seen immediately, without the intervention of proof, to be true, is, ac- cording to the common mode of expression, said to be seen intu- itively.
It is, however, only of the lower exercises of this power that we can avail ourselves in our arguments with our fellow men. Be- cause a truth may be self-evident to one mind, it does not follow that it must be so to all other minds. But there is a class of truths so plain that they never fail to reveal themselves to the human mind, and to which the mind cannot refuse its assent. Hence the criteria of those truths which are accepted as axioms, and which are assumed in all reasoning, and the denial of which renders all faith and all knowledge impossible, are universality and necessity. What all believe, and what all men must believe, is to be assumed as undeniably true. These criteria indeed include each other. If a truth be universally admitted, it must be because no man can
194 PART I. — THEOLOGY. fCn. I. — Orig. op Idea of God.
rationally call it to question. And if it be a matter of necessary belief, it must be accepted by all who possess the nature out of the constitution of which the necessity arises.
B. Proof that the Knoivledge of Crod is Innate.
The question now is, Whether the existence of God is an intui- tive truth ? Is it given in the very constitution of our nature ? Is it one of those truths which reveal themselves to every human mind, and to which the mind is forced to assent ? In other words, has it the characteristics of universality and necessity ? It should be remarked that when universality is made a criterion of intuitive truths, it is intended to apply to those truths only which have their foundation or evidence in the constitution of our nature. As to the external world, if ignorance be universal, e^Tor may be univer- sal. All men, for example, for ages believed that the sun moves round the earth ; but the universality of that belief was no evi- dence of its truth.
When it is asked. Whether the existence of God is an intuitive truth, the question is equivalent to asking. Whether the belief in his existence is universal and necessary ? If it be true that all men do believe there is a God, and that no man can possibly dis- believe his existence, then his existence is an intuitive truth. It is one of those given in the constitution of our nature ; or which, our nature being what it is, no man can fail to know and to ac- knowledge.
Such has been the common opinion in all ages. Cicero ^ saj'-s : " Esse Deos, quoniam insitas eorum, vel potius innatas cognitiones habemus." Tertullian^ says of the heathen of his day, that the common people had a more correct idea of God than the philoso- phers. Calvin ^ says : " Hoc quidem recte judicantibus semper constabit, insculptum mentibus humanis esse divinitatis sensum, qui deleri nunquam potest." The whole tendency in our day is to make the existence of God so purely a matter of intuition as to lead to the disparagement of all argument in proof of it. This extreme, however, does not justify the denial of a truth so impor- tant as that God has not left any human being without a knowledge of his existence and authority.
The word God, however, is used in a very wide sense. In the Christian sense of the word, " God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, good- ness, and truth." This sublime idea of God no human mind ever
1 De Naiura Deorum, i. 17. 2 Testimonium Animce. 8 fnstilutio, i. iii. 3.