is not now the question. He admits that we are forced by the con- stitution of our nature thus to think of God. And by the funda- mental principle of all true philosophy, what we are forced to believe must be true. It is true, therefore, that God really is what we take Him to be, when we ascribe to Him the perfections of our own nature, without limitation, and to an infinite degree.
Our Moral Nature demands this Idea of God.
2. It has already been shown, when speaking of the moral ar- gument for the existence of God, that all men are conscious of their accountability to a being superior to themselves, who knows what they are and what they do, and who has the will and purpose to reward or punish men according to their works. The God, therefore, who is revealed to us in our nature, is a God who knows, and wills, and acts ; who rewards and punishes. That is, He is a person ; an intelligent, voluntary agent, endowed with moral attri- butes. This revelation of God must be true. It must make known to us what God really is, or our nature is a lie. All this Mr. Mansel, who holds that God cannot be known, admits. He admits that a sense of dependence on a superior power is " a fact of the inner consciousness ; " that this superior power is " not an inexorable fate, or immutable law, but a Being having at least so far the attributes of personality, that He can show favour or sever- ity to those dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with the feelings of hope, and fear, and reverence, and gratitude." *■ No man, however, is, or can be grateful to the sun, or to the at- mosphere, or to unintelligent force. Gratitude is a tribute of a person to a person. Again, the same author admits that " the moral reason, or will, or conscience of man, call it by what name we please, can have no authority save as implanted in him by some higher spiritual Being, as a law emanating from a law-giver." ^ " We are thus compelled," he says, " by the consciousness of jf moral obligation, to assume the existence of a moral [and of course /; t)f a personal] Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right; ; and wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity." ^ Our ar- , gument from these facts, is, that if our moral nature compels us to believe that God is a person, He must be a person, and conse- quently that we arrive at a true knowledge of God by attributing to Him the perfections of our own nature.
1 Limits of Religious Thcmght, etc., p. 120. 2 Ibid, p. 121
3 Ibid. p. 122.
342 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. IV. — Can God be knowh?
Our Religious Nature makes the same Demand.
8. The argument from our religious, as distinct from our moral nature, is essentially the same. Morality is not all of religion. The one is as much a law and necessity of our nature as the other. To worship, in the religious sense of the word, is to ascribe infinite perfection to its object. It is to express to that object our acknowl- edgments for the blessings we enjoy, and to seek their continuance ; it is to confess, and praise, and pray, and to adore. We cannot worship the law of gravity, or unconscious force, or the mere order of the universe. Our religious nature, in demanding an ob- ject of supreme reverence, love, and confidence, demands a per- sonal God, a God clothed with the attributes of a nature like our own ; who can hear our confessions, praises, and prayers ; who can love, and be loved ; who can supply our wants, and fill all our capacities for good. Thus again it appears that unless our whole nature is a contradiction and a falsehood, we arrive at a true knowl- edge of God when we ascribe to Him the perfections of our own nature.
Mr. Mansel admits that our nature does demand a personal and moral Deity ; but, he says, " the very conception of a moral na- ture is in itself the conception of a limit, for morality is the compliance with a law ; and a law, whether imposed from within or from without, can only be conceived to opei'ate by limiting the range of possible actions." ^ In like manner he says, " The only human conception of personality is that of limitation." Therefore, if God be infinite, he can neither be a person, nor possess moral attributes. This is the argument of Strauss, and of all other pan- theists, against the doctrine of a personal God. Mr. Mansel ad- mits the force of the ai'gument, and says we must renounce all hope of knowing what God is, and be content with " regulative knowledge," which teaches not what God really is, but what He wills us to think Him to be. We are thus forbidden to trust to our necessary beliefs. We must not regard as true what God by the constitution of our nature forces us to believe. Tiiis is to sub- vert all philosophy and all religion, and to destroy the difierence between the rational and the irrational. Why is this contradiction between reason and conscience, between our rational and moral nature, assumed to exist? Simply because philosophers choose to give such a definition of morality and personality that neither can be predicated of an infinite Being. It is not true that either
1 Limits of Religious Thought, etc., p. 127.