filed, apprehended the one with the same confidence that his senses apprehended the other. It is of great importance that men should know and feel that they are by their very nature bound to believe in God ; that they cannot emancipate themselves from that belief, without derationalizing and demoralizing their whole being.
§ 3. Knowledge of Crod not due exclusively to Tradition.
There are some theologians who are unable to believe that the knowledge of God can be referred either to the constitution of our nature, or to any process of reasoning. Not only the exalted view of the Divine Being presented in the Bible, but the sim- ple and perverted apprehensions of his nature prevailing among the heathen, they say must be referred to an original supernatu- ral revelation. Such a revelation was made to our first parents, and from them passed over to their descendants. When the knowledge thus communicated began to die out among men, God again revealed himself to Abraham, and made him and his pos- terity the depositaries of the truth. Either, therefore, from the remains of the primitive revelation, or by I'adiation from the chosen people, all the knowledge of God existing in the world has been derived. The attempt is made to show that the more remote any people were from the Jews, the less did they know of God ; and the more any nation enjoyed of intercourse with the people to whom God had committed his oracles, the more correct and extended was their knowledge.
This view, although arising from reverence for the Word of God, is evidently extreme. It is true that the further we go back in the history of the world, the nearer we approach the primal revelation, the purer is the knowledge concerning Him. It may also be true, as a general rule, that the more any people were brought under the influence of the truth as held by the chosen people of God, the more enliglitened they became. It may further be conceded that those who with the Bible in their hands reject its teachings, and give themselves up to their own speculations, turn, as the Apostle expresses it, " the truth of God into a lie," losing all knowledge ol the living and true God. All this, however, does not prove that the knowledge of God is hot written on the heart. Our intuitive perceptions need to be cherished, developed, and interpreted. We know from Scripture that the law is written in characters which cannot be obliterated, upon the souls of all men, and yet it has been perverted, misinterpreted, or disregarded by men in every age and in every part of the tvorld.
202 PART L — THEOLOGY. [Ch. I — Orig. of Idea of God.
§ 4. Can the Existence of G-od he proved ?
A large class of theologians and philosophers deny that the ex- istence of God is susceptible of proof. This is done on different grounds.
First. It is said that the knowledge of God being intuitive, it is not a proper subject of proof. This is the position taken by that class of theologians who resolve all religion into feeling, and by the modem school of speculative philosophers, who make such, a wide distinction between the reason and the understanding ; the former being the intuitional, and the latter the discursive faculty. Eternal and necessary truths belong to the province of the reason ; subor- dinate truths to the sphere of the understanding. It is the under- standing that argues and concludes. The reason apprehends by immediate vision. What relates to God, as the eternal, infinite, necessary Being, belongs to the province of reason, and not to that of the understanding. Even such theistic w^'iters as Twesten ^ say that the good need no proof that God is, and that the wicked are not susceptible of conviction. You cannot prove that a thing is beautiful, or that it is good. So neither can you prove that there is a God. The fallacy of this statement is obvious. Beauty and goodness are qualities which must be discerned by the mind, just as the objects of sight are discerned by the eye. As it is true that you cannot prove to a blind man that an object is red, so you can- not prove to a peasant that the " Paradise Lost " is sublime. But the existence of God is an objective fact. It may be shown that it is a fact which cannot be rationall}'- denied. Although all men have feelings and convictions which necessitate the assumption that there is a God ; it is, nevertheless, perfectly legitimate to show that there are other facts which necessarily lead to the same conclusion.
Besides, it is to be remembered that theistical arguments are designed to prove not only that thei-e is a necessity for the assump- tion of an extra-mundane and eternal Being, but mainly, to show what that Being is ; that He is a personal Being, self-conscious, intelligent, moral. All this may lie inclosed in the primary intui- tion, but it needs to be brought out and established.
Secondly. Another class of objections against all theistical argu- ments, relates to the arguments themselves. They are pronounced fallacious, as involving a, petitio principii ; or declared to be invalid as derived from false premises ; or leading to conclusions other than that intended to be established. Of this every man must judge for 1 Vorleaungen.