verse. Instinct is concerned with the wants of individnal organ- ism. But who adapts the organs of an animal to its instincts ? Who adapts external nature, air, light, heat, water, food, etc., etc., to its necessities ? What relation has instinct to the stellar uni- verse ?
3. Moreover, these instincts themselves are among the phenom- • ena to be accounted for. If they are blind impulses, can they be accounted for, in all their variety and in all their accommodation to the nature and wants of animals, by a blind impulse pervading all things ? The fact is that the adaptation of external nature to the instincts of the different classes of animals, and of their instincts to external nature, affords one of the most convincing proofs of an intellect exterior to both, and ordering the one in relation to the other.
4. It is to be remembered, although the topic of a separate argu- ment, that the soul of man with all its wonderful powers and capacities, intellectual, moral, and religious, is one of the facts to be accounted for. To trace the existence of the soul of man to " a blind impulse," is to assume that the effect immeasurably tran- scends its cause, which is assuming an effect without a cause.
5. All these objections take for granted the eternal existence of matter, and the eternity of physical forces. As these are, they must have existed from eternity, or have begun to be. If they began to be they must have had a cause outside of themselves. Tliat cause cannot be nonentity. It must be a self-existing, eternal substance, having the intelligence, power, will, and benevolence adequate to account for the universe and all that it contains. That is, the cause of the universe must be a personal God.
§ 5. The Morale or Anthropological Argument. A. Nature of the Argument.
As the image of the sun reflected from a mirror, or the smooth surface of a lake, reveals to us that the sun is, and what it is ; so I the soul of man, just as clearly, and just as certainly, reveals tnat / I God is and what He is. The reflection of the sun does not teach \\ i us everything that is true concerning that luminary ; it does not 'I I reveal its internal constitution, nor tell us how its light and heat are maintained from age to age. In like manner the soul, as the • image of God, does not reveal all that God is. In both cases, and equally in both cases, what is revealed is true, that is, trustworthy.
It answers to the objective reality. As we know that the sun
234 PART I. ^THEOLOGY. [Ch. U. — Theism.
really is what its reflection represents him as being, so we know that God is what the nature of the human soul declares Him to be. Doubt in the one case is just as unreasonable, and we may say, just as impossible as in the other.
It has been shown in the preceding chapter that every man has in his own nature the evidence of the existence of God, an evi- dence which never can be obliterated, and which will force convic- tion on the most unwilling. It is no less true that every man has in himself the same irresistible evidence that God is an extramun- dane personal Being ; that He is intelligent, voluntary, and moral ; that He knows ; ■ that He has the right to command ; and that He can punish and can save.
It may naturally be asked, If this be so ; if every man has in his own nature a witness whose competency he cannot question, and whose testimony he cannot ignore, What is the use of arguing about the matter ? For two reasons, first, because even self-evident truths are often denied ; and secondly, because men, in their present moral state, are under a strong temptation to deny the existence of a holy and just God ; and thirdly, because efforts are constantly made to pervert pr contradict the testimony of our nature to the existence and nature of God.
B. Argument from the Existence of the Mind. Every man has in his own consciousness the evidence of the existence of mind. He knows that he is an intelligent, personal being. He knows that his personality does not reside in his body, but in his soul. It is included in the facts of consciousness that the soul and body are distinct, that they are different substances having not only different but incompatible attributes. That such is the general conviction of men is plain from all languages recogniz- ing the distinction ; and from the fact that it is never denied ex- cept by speculative or theoretical writers. The common conscious- ness of men as revealed by their forms of speech, and by their avowals, and by the universal belief, in some form, of a state of conscious existence after death, bears witness to the truth that the soul is something different from, and far superior to the body. How is the existence of this immaterial, thinking, immortal substance which we call self, to be accounted for ? That it has not always existed is undeniable. If it began to be, it must have the cause of its existence out of itself. That cause cannot be the soul of the parent, for that also is an effect. It began to be. And it is univer- sally admitted that an infinite series of effects is unthinkable. If