Question: Is  the  idea  of  God  innate?     And  is  it  an  intuitive  truth?

Answer: That depends upon the sense in which the respective terms are taken. It is evident that there are no "innate" ideas in the sense that any child was ever born with a conception of the divine being, or any other conception already formed in his mind. It is also certain that the human mind when developed under purely natural conditions, in the absence of all super- IN WHAT SENSE INNATE? 31 natural revelation, can never attain to an adequate conception of the divine nature. On the other hand, however, all' history- proves that the idea of God is innate in the sense that the constitutional faculties of the human soul do, under all natural conditions, secure the spontaneous recognition, more or less clear, of God as tJie ultimate ground of all being, and as the Lord of conscience, self-manifested in the soul and in the world. It is innate in so much as the evidence is as universally present as the light of day, and the process by which it is apprehended is constitutional. If the term "intuition" is taken in its strict sense of a direct vision of a truth, seen in its own light to be necessary, by an intellectual act incapable of being resolved into more elementary processes of thought, then the existence of God is not a truth apprehended intuitively by men. The process whereby it is reached, whether spontaneously or by elaborate reasoning, em- braces many indubitable intuitions as elements, but no man apprehends God himself by a direct intuition. Because — (1.) Although the recognition of the divine exist- ence is necessary in the sense that the great majority of men recognize the truth, and are unable to disbelieve it even when they wish, and no one can do so without doing violence to his nature, yet it is not necessar}^ to thought in the sense that the non-existence of God is unthinkable. (2.) Because God mani- fests himself to us not immediately but mediately through his works, and there is always present, at least implicitly, an infer- ence in the act whereby the soul recognizes his presence and action. (3.) The true idea of God is exceedingly complex, and is reached by a complex process, whether spontaneous or not, involving various elements capable of analysis and description. On the other hand it is true that God manifests himself in his working in our souls and in external nature just as the invisible souls of our fellow-men manifest themselves, and we spontaneously recognize him just as we do them. We recog- nize them because (a) we are generically like them, and (5) their attributes are significally expressed in their words and actions. And we recognize God because (a) we have been made in his image, Avliich fact we spontaneously recognize (6) from his self- revelations in consciousness, especially in conscience, and from the characteristics of the external world. "While the mental process which has been described — the theistic inference — is capable of analysis, it is itself synthetic. The principles on which it depends are so connected that the mind can embrace them all in a single act, and must include and apply them all in the apprehension of God. Will, intel- ligence, conscience, reason, and the ideas which they supply; 32 THE BEING OF GOD. cause, design, goudness, infinity, and the arguments which rest on these ideas — all coalesce into this one grand issue." — "Theism" by Prof. Flint, pp. 71, 72. 5. If the existence of God is spontaneously recognized hy all men under normcd conditions of consciousness, ivhat is the value of formal arguments to prove that existence ? And lohat are the arguments generally used? 1st. These arguments are of value as analyses and scientific verifications of the mental processes implicitly involved in the spontaneous re cognition of the self-manifestations of God. 2d. They are of i. ^e also for the purpose of vindicating the legitimacy of the :)rocess against the criticisms of skeptics. 3d. Also for the purpose of quickening and confirming the spon- taneous recognition by draAving attention to the extent and variety of the evidence to which it responds. 4th. The vari- ous arguments are convergent rather than consecutive. They do not all establish the same elements of the theistic concep- tion, but each establishes independently its separate element, and thus is of use («) in contributing confirmatory evidence that God is, and (Ij) complementary evidence as to ivhcd God is. They constitute an organic whole, and are the analysis and illustration of the spontaneous act whereby the mass of men have always recognized God. "Although causality does not involve design, nor design goodness, design involves causality, and goodness both causality and design. The proofs of intelli- gence are also proofs of power; and the proofs of goodness are proofs of both intelligence and power. The principles of reason which compel us to think of the Supreme Moral Intelligence as self-existent, eternal, infinite, and unchangeable Being, supple- ment the proofs from other sources, and give self-consistency and completeness to the doctrine of theism." — "Theism," Prof. Flint, pp. 73, 74. The usual arguments will be examined under the following heads : 1st. The Cosmological Argument, or the evidence for God's existence as First Cause. 2d. The Teleological Argument, or the evidence of God's existence aftbrded by the presence of order and adaptation in the universe. 3d. The Moral Argument, or the evidence afforded by the moral consciousness and history of mankind. 4th. The evidence afforded by the phenomena of Scripture and the supernatural history they record. 5th. The A priori Argument, and the testimony afforded by reason to God as the Infinite and Absolute. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUM VT. 33 6. State the Cosmological Argument. It may be stated in tlie form of a syllogism, thus — Major Premise. — Every new existence or change in any thing previously existing must have had a cause pre-existing and adequate. 3Iinor Premise. — The universe as a whole and in all its parts is a system of changes. Conclusion. — Hence the universe must have a cause exterior to itself, and the ultimate or absolute caus'^^ must be eternal, uncaused, and unchangeable. 1st. As to the major premise; the caus/l judgment is in- tuitive and absolutel}^ universal and necesl -iry. It has been denied theoretically by some speculators, as Hume and Mill, but it is always used by them and all others in all their rea- soning as to the origin of the world, as well as of all things it contains. The judgment is unavoidable; the opposite is un- thinkable. Something exists now, therefore something must have existed from eternity, and that which has existed from eternity is the cause of that w^iicli exists now. It has been claimed that the causal judgment leads to an infinite regressive series of causes and effects. But this is absurd. (1.) The judgment is not that every thing must have a. cause, but that every new thing or change must have been caused. But that which is eternal and immutable needs no cause. (2.) An infinite series of causes and effects is absurd, for that is only a series of changes, wdiich is precisely that which demands a cause, and all the more imperatively in pro- portion to its length. A real cause, on the other hand, — that in which the causal judgment can alone absolutely rest, — must be neither a change nor a series of changes, but something uncaused, eternal and immutable. As a matter of fact all philosophers and men of science without exception assume the principles asserted. They all postulate an eternal, self-existent, imchangeable cause of the universe, whether a personal spirit, or material atoms, or a substance of wdiich both matter and spirit are modes, or an unconscious intelligent world-soul in union with matter. 2d. As to the minor premise. The fact that the universe as a whole and in all its parts is a system of changes is empha- sized by every principle and lesson of modern science. Every discovery in the fields of geology and astronomy, and all spec- ulation— as the nebular hypothesis and the hypothesis of evolu- tion— embody this principle as their very essence. But John Stuart Mill in his "Essay on Theism," pp. 142, 143, says: "There is in nature a permanent element, and also a 3J: THE BEING OF GOD. changeable: the changes are always the effects of previous changes; the permanent existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all. . . . There is in every object another and permanent element, viz., the specific elementary substance or substances of which it consists, and their inherent properties. These are not known as beginning to exist; within the range of human knowledge they had no beginning, consequently no cause; though they themselves are causes or concauses of every thing that takes place." " Whenever a physical phenomenon is traced to its cause, that cause when analyzed is found to be a certain quantum of force, combined with certain collocations. The force itself is essentially one and the same, and there exists of it in nature a fixed quantity, which (if the the- ory of the conservation of forces be true) is never increased or diminished. Here then we find in the changes of material nature a permanent element, to all appearance the very one of which we are in quest. This it is apparently to which, if to any thing, we must assign the character of First Cause." — "Essay on Theism," pp. 144, 145. We answer — (1.) The existence of "Energy" in any of its convertable forms dissociated from matter is absolutely un- thinkable. This is recognized as an unquestionable scientific truth by Stewart and Tait (" Unseen Universe," p. 79). (2.) It is an obvious fact "that all but an exceedingly small trac- tion of the light and heat of the sun and stars goes out into space, and does not return to them. In the next place the vis- ible motion of the large bodies of the universe is gradually being stopped by something which may be denominated ethe- rial friction," and at last they must fall together, and constitute by successive aggregations one mass. "In fine the degradation of Energy of the visible universe proceeds, 'pari jpassii^ with the aggregation of mass. The very fact, therefore, that the large masses of the visible universe are of finite size, is suffi- cient to assure us that the process can not have been going on forever, or in other words that the visible universe must have had an origin in time" — since (a) Energy remains aggregated iit finite quantities yet undiftused, and {h) since the matter of the universe still remains in separate masses. Thus the very law o,f the correlation of Energy to which Mill appeals proves, when really tested, that the visible imiverse had a beginning and will have an end. Stewart and Tait (" Unseen Universe," p. 166). (3.) His assumption, also, that the matter of the uni- verse is in its ultimate atoms eternal and unchangeable, is un- proved and contrary to scientific analogy. Clark ]\Iaxwell (in his address as President of the British Association for Advance- ment of Science, 1870) says: "The exact equality of each mole- THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 35 cule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Her- schell has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-ex- istent." (4.) As a matter of fact all evolution theories as to the genesis of the universe necessarily postulate a commence- ment in time, and a primordial fire-mist. But this fire-mist can not be the First Cause the causal judgment demands, be- cause it is not eternal and immutable. If eternal it would be fully developed. If fully developed it could not develop into the universe. If immutable it could not pass into change. If not immutable it is itself, like the universe which issues from it, a transient condition of matter, like aJl other change de- manding for itself a cause. 7. State the Teleological Argument. Teleology from reAo?, end, and Xoyo'i, discourse, is the sci- ence of final causes, or of purposes or design as exhibited in the adjustments of parts to wholes, of means to ends, of organs to uses in nature. It is also familiarly called the Argument from Design ; and is ultimately based upon the recognition of the operations of an intelligent cause in nature. It may be profit- ably stated in two forms based respectively on the more general and the more special manifestations of that intelligence. First Form. Major Premise. — Universal order and harmony in the conspiring operation of a vast multitude of separate ele- ments can be explained only by the postulate of an intelligent cause. Minor Premise. — The universe as a whole and in all its parts is a fabric of the most complex and symmetrical order. Conclusion. — Therefore the eternal and absolute cause of the universe is an intelligent mind. Second Form. Major Premise. — The adjustment of parts and the adaptation of means to effect an end or purpose can be ex- plained only by reference to a designing intelligence and will. Minor Premise. — The universe is full of such adjustments of parts, and of organisms composed of parts conspiring to efi"ect an end. Conclusion. — Therefore the First Cause of the universe must be an intelligent mind and wall. These arguments if valid amount to proving that God is an eternal self-existing Person. For the assumption of an un- conscious intelligence, or of an intelligence producing effects without the exercise of will is absurd. These phrases repre- sent no possible ideas. And intelligence and will together constitute personality. As to the first form of the argument it is evident that the 36 THE BEING OF GOD. very fact that science is possible is an indubitable proof that the order of nature is intellectual. Science is a product of the human mind, which is absolutely incapable of passing beyond the laws of its own constitution. Intuitions of reason, logical processes of analysis, inductive or deductive inference, imagi- nation, invention, and all the activities of the soul organize the scientific process. To all this external nature is found perfectly to correspond. Even the most subtle solutions of abstract mathematical and mechanical problems have been subsequently found by experiment to have been anticipated in nature. The laws of nature are expressions of numerical and geometrical harmonies, and are instinct with reason and beauty. Yet these laws although invariable under invariable conditions, are nei- ther eternal nor inherent in the elementary constitution of the universe. The properties of elemental matter are constant, but the laws which organize them are themselves complicated effects resulting from antecedent adjustments of these elements themselves under the categoi'ies of time, place, quantity, and quality. As these adjustments change the laws change. These adjustments, therefore, are the cause of these laws, and the ad- justments themselves must be the product either of chance, which is absurd, or of intelligence, which is certain. This intellectual order of nature is the first necessary postu- late of all science, and it is the essence of all the processes of the universe from the grouping of atoms to the revolution of worlds, from the digestion of a polyp to the functional action of the human brain. As to the second form of this Argument. — The principle of design presupposes the general intellectual order of the uni- verse and her laws, and presents in advance the affirmation that the character of the First Cause is further ma^iifested by the everywhere present evidence that these general laws are made to conspire by special adjustments to the accomplishment of ends evidently intended. This principle is illustrated by the mutual adjustments of the various provinces of nature, and especially by the vegetable and animal organisms, and the re- lations they involve, of organ to organism, of organism to in- stinct, and of single organisms and classes of organisms to each other and to their physical surroundings. In many cases the intention of these special adjustments is self-evident and undeniable, as in the case of the parts of the eye to the pur- pose of vision. In other cases it is more obscure and conject- in-al. In the present condition of science we can understand oidy in part, but froni the beginning the evidence of intel- ligent purpose has been transparent and overwhelming. A single sentence proves intelligence, although the context is OBJECTIONS TO THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 37 undecipherable. But every advance of science discloses the same evidence over wider areas and in clearer light. 8. State and answer the objections to the theistic inference from the evidences of special design. 1st. Hume ("Dialogues on Natural Religion," Pt. VII., etc.,) argues that our conviction that adaptation implies design is due to experience and cannot go beyond it. That our judg- ment that natural organisms imply design in their cause is an inference from the analogy of human contrivance, and its effects. He argues further that this analogy is false because — (1.) The human worker is antecedently known to us as an intelligent contriver, while the author of nature is antecedently unknown, and the very object sought to be verified by the theistic infer- ence. (2.) The processes of nature are all unlike the processes by which man executes his contrivances, and the formation of the world, and the institution of the processes of nature are peculiar effects of the like of which we have no experience. We answer — (1.) The argument rests upon a false assump- tion of fact. The human contriver, the soul of our fellow-man, is not antecedently known to us, nor is ever in any way known except by the character of the works by which he manifests himself And precisely in the same way and to the same ex- tent is the Author of natiue known. (2.) It rests on a false assumption of principle. The analogy of human contrivances is not the ground of our conviction that order and adaptation imply intelligence. It is a universal and necessary judgment of reason that order and adaptation can only spring from an intelhgent cause, or from accident, and that the latter supposi- tion is absurd. 2d. Some men of science, who have become habituated to the consideration of the universe as an absolute unit, all the pro- cesses of w^iich are executed by invariable general laws (a mode of thought in which for centuries science was anticipated by Augustinian Theology), object that in inferring intention from the adjustment of parts in special groups or systems, the natural theologian had mistaken a part for a whole, and an incidental effect of a general law, resulting from special and temporary conditions, for the real end of the law itself They hold that if even the First Cause of the universe were intelli- gent, it were infinitely absurd for men to presume to interpret his purpose from what we see of the special results of the working of laws working from infinite past time, through infi- nite space, and over an infinite system of conspiring parts. We ansiver — (1.) It is self-evident that the relations of the parts of a special whole conspiring to a special end may be 38 THE BEING OF GOD. fully understood, while the relations of that special whole to the general whole may be entirel}' unknown, although strong light is thrown even on this side by reason and revelation. A single bone of an unknown species of animal gives undeniable evidence of special adaptation, and may even, as scientists justly claim, throAv light beyond itself upon the constitution of that otherwise unknown whole to which it belonged. (2.) We con- fess that this criticism, although failing as to the argument from design, has force relatively to the mode iu which that argument has often been conceived. The older natural theolo- gians did often to too great a degree abstra(;t individual or- ganisms from the great dynamic whole of which they are products as well as parts. Dr. Flint ("Theism," p. 159) well distinguishes between the intrioisic, the extrinsic^ and the ulti- mate ends of any special adjustment. Thus the intrinsic end of that special adjustment of parts called the eye is vision. Its extrinsic ends are the uses it serves to the animal it belongs to, and all the uses he serves to all he stands immediately or remotely related to. Its ultimate ei«;l is the end of the uni- verse itself "Theism," p. 163 — "When we affirm, then, that final causes in the sense of intrinsic ends are in things, we affirm merely that things are systematic unities, the parts of which are definitely related to one another, and co-ordinated to a common issue; and when we affirm that final causes in the sense of extrinsic ends are in things, we affirm merely that things are not isolated and independent systems, but systems definitely related to other systems, and so adjusted as to be parts or components of higher systems, and means to issues more comprehensive than their own." It is true indeed that a man can not discern the ultimate end of a part until he discerns the ultimate end of the whole, and that he can not discern all the extrinsic ends of any spe- cial system until he knows all its relations to all other special systems. Nevertheless, as a man who knows nothing of the relation of a given plant or animal to the flora or fauna of a continent, may be absolutely certain of the functions of the root or the claw in the economy of the plant or beast, so the manner in which all the parts which conspire to make a spe- cial whole are adapted to effect that end may be perfectl}' un- derstood, while we know nothing as yet of the extrinsic relation of that special whole to that which is exterior to itself 3d. It has been claimed in recent times by a certain class of scientists that evidence for the existence of God afibrded by the order and adaptation exhibited in the processes of nature has been very much weakened, if not absolutely invalidated, by the assumed probability of the alternative hypothesis of OBJECTIONS TO THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 39 Evolution. There are many theories of Evolution, but the term in the general sense denotes the judgment that the state of the universe as a whole and in all its parts any one moment of time, has its cause in its state the immediately preceding moment, and that these changes have been brought about through the agency of powers inherent in nature, and that they may be traced back from moment to moment without any break of causal continuity through all past time. All possible theories of Evolution, considered in their rela- tion to theology, may be classified thus: (1.) Those which neither deny no^* obscure the evidence which the order and adaptation observed in nature afford to the existence of God, and his immanence in and providential control of his works. (2) Those which, while recognizing God as the original source in the remote past, to which the origination and the primary adjustments of the universe are to be referred, yet deny his immanence and constant providential activity in his works. (3.) Those which professedly or virtually obscure or deny the evidence afforded by the (jwder and adaptation of the universe for the existence and activity of God alike as Creator and as Providential Ruler. With the first class of Evolution theories the Natural Theo- logian has, of course, only the most friendly interest. As to the second class, which admits that a divine intelli- gence contrived and inaugurated the universe at the absolute beginning, yet deny that any such agent is immanent in the universe controlling its processes, we remark — (1.) That the point we have at present to establish is the eternal self-exist- ence of an intelligent First Cause, and not the mode of his relation to the universe. The latter question will be treated in subsequent chapters. (2.) It is far more philosophical, and more in accordance with a true interpretation of the scientifio principle of continuity, to conceive of the First Cause as imma- nent in the universe, and as organically concurring with all unintelligent second causes in all processes exhibiting power or intelligence. This is recognized by that large majority of scientific men who are either orthodox Theists, or who refer all the phenomena of the physical universe to the dynamic ac- tion of the divine will. (3.) The evidence afforded by man's moral consciousness and history and by revelation, to the im- manence and effective agency of God in all his works, is un- answerable. As to the third class of Evolution theories, which do either professedly or virtually obscure or deny the evidence afforded by order or contrivance to an intelligent First Cause of the Universe, as for example the theory of Darwin as to the differ- 40 THE BEING OF GOD. entiation of all organisms through accidental variations occumng through nnlimited time, ave remark — 1st. Every such scheme, when it is proposed as an account of the existing universe, must furnish a probable explanation of all classes of facts. It is notorious that every theory of purely natural Evolution fails utterly to explain the following facts: (1.) The origination of life. It could not have existed in the lire-mist. It could not have been generated by that whicli has no life. The mature decision of science to-day (1878) is expressed in the old axiom onme vivum ex vivo. (2.) The origin of sensation. (3.) Also of intelligence and will. (4). Also of conscience. (5.) The establishment of distinct log- ically corrolated and persistent types of genera and species, maintained by the law of hybridity. (6.) The origin of man. Prof A^irchow of Berlin, in his recent address at the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians at ]\Iunich, says, "You are aware that I am now specially engaged in the study of anthropology ; but I am bound to declare that every positive advance which we have made in the province of prehistoric anthropology has actually removed us further from the proof of such connection (i. e., the descent of man from any lower type)." 2d. But even if continuous evolution could be pi-oved as a fact, the significance of the evidence of intelligent order and contrivance would not be in the least affected. It would only establish a method or system of means, but could in no degree alter the nature of the effect, nor the attributes of tlie real cause disclosed by them. (1.) The laws of abiogenesis, of reproduc- tion, of sexual differentiation and reproduction, of heredity, of variation, such as can evolve sensation, reason, conscience, and will out of atoms and mechanical energy, would all still remain to be accounted for. (2.) Laws are never causes, but always complicated modes of action resulting from the co-action  of innumerable unconscious agents. Instead, therefore, of being explanations they are the very complex effects for which reason demands an intellectual cause. (3.) All physical laws result from the original properties of matter acting under the mutual condition of certain complicated adjustments. Change the ad- justments and the laws change. The laws which execute evo- lution, or rather into which the process of evolution is analyzed, must be referred back to the original adjustments of the ina- terial elements of the fire-mist. These adjustments, in whicli all future order and life is by hypothesis latent, must have been caused by chance or intelligence. Huxley in his "Criti- cisms on Origin of Species," p. 330, founds the whole logic of Evolution on chance thus: It has been "demonstrated that an THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 41 apparatus tliorouglily well-adapted to a particular purpose, may- be the result of a method of trial and error worked out by un- intelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end by an intelligent agent." "Ac- cording to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to Darwin organisms are like grape-shot, of which one hits something and the rest fall wide." The modern scientific explanation of the processes of the uni- verse by physical causes alone, to the exclusion of mind, differs from the old long-exploded chance theory, only by the acci- dents (a) of the juggling use of the words "laws of nature," (/;) and the assumption that chance operating through indefi- nate duration can accomplish the work of intelligence. But as no man can believe that any amount of time will explain the form of flint knives and arrow heads, in the absence of human agents, or that any number of throws could cast a font of type into the order of letters in the plays of Shakespeare, so no man can rationally believe that the complicated and significantly intellectual order of the universe sprang from chance. (4.) In artificial breeding man selects. In "natural selection" nature selects. Hence, if the results are the most careful adjustments to effect purpose, it follows that that characteristic must be stamped upon the organisms by nature, and hence nature itself must therefore be intelligently directed, either (a) by an intel- ligence immanent in her elements, or in her whole as organized, or (6) by the original adjustment of her machinery by an intel- ligent Creator. 9. State the 3Ioral Argument, or the Evidence afforded by the 3Ioral Consciousness ayid History of mankind. The Cosmological argument led us to an eternal self-existent First Cause. The argument from the order and adaptation dis- covered in the processes of the universe revealed this great First Cause as possessing intelligence and will; that is, as a personal spirit. The moral or anthropological argument fur- nishes new data for inference, at once confirming the former conclusions as to the fact of the existence of a personal intelli- gent First Cause, and at the same time adding to the concep- tion the attributes of holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. The argument from design includes the argument from cause, and the argument from righteousness and benevolence includes both the arguments from cause and from design, and adds to them a new element of its own. This group of arguments may be stated thus: 1st. Consciousness is the fundamental ground of all knowl- edge. It gives us immediately the knowledge of self as exist- 42 THE BEING OF GOD. ing and as the subject of certain attributes, and the agent in certain forms of activity. Tliese souls and all their attributes must be accounted for. They have not existed from eternity. They could not have been evolved out of material elements, because — (1.) Consciousness testilies to their unity, simplicity, and spirituality. (2.) The laws of reason and the moral sense can not be explained as the result of transformed sense impres- sions modified by association derived by heredity (Mill and Spencer) ; for, (a) they are universally the same, ili) incapable of analysis, (c) necessary, and (c/) sovereign over all impulses. Therefore the human soul must have been created, and its Cre- ator must have attributes superior to his work. 2d. Man is essentially and universally a religious being. The sense of absolute dependence and moral accountability is inherent in his nature, universal and necessary. Conscience- always implies responsibility to a sujDerior, in moral authority, and therefore in moral character. It is especially implied in the sense of guilt which accompanies every violation of con- science. God is manifested and recognized in conscience as a holy, righteous, just, and intelligent will; i. e., a holy personal spirit. 3d. The adaptations of nature, as far as we can trace their relations to sentient beings, are characteristically beneficent, and evidence a general purpose to promote happiness, and to gratify a sense of beauty. This implies design, and design of a special esthetic and moral character, and proves that the First Cause is benevolent and a lover of beauty. 4th. The entire history of the human race, as far as known, discloses a moral order and purpose, which cannot be explained by the intelligence or moral purpose of the human agents con- cerned, which discovers an all-embracing unity of plan, com- prehending all peoples and all centuries. The phenomena of social and national life, of ethnological distribution, of the de- velopment and diffusion of civilizations and religions can be explained only by the existence of a wise, righteous, and be- nevolent ruler and educator of mankind. 10. State and answer the objections to the 3Ioral Argument. These objections are founded — 1st. On the mechanical in- variability of natural laws, and their inexorable disregard of the welfare of sentient creatures. 2d. The sufterings of irrational animals. 3d. The prevalence of moral and ph^^'sical evils among men. 4th. The unequal apportionment of providential favors, and the absence of all proportion between the measure of happiness allotted, and the respective moral characters of the recipients. OBJECTIONS TO MORAL ARGUMENT. 43 These difficulties, more or less trying to the faith of all, are the real occasion in the great majority of instances, of skep- tical atheism. John Stewart Mill in his " Essay on Nature " ("Three Essays on Religion ") describes it as the characteristic of "Nature" ruthlessly to inflict suffering and death, and affirms that the cause of nature, if a personal will, must be a monster of cruelty and injustice. In his " Essay on Theism," Pt. ii., he argues that the attempt to maintain that the author of nature, such as we know it, is at once omniscient and omnipotent and absolutely just and benevolent is abominably immoral. That he can be excused of cruelty and injustice only on the plea of limited knowledge or power, or both. He sums up his con- clusion from the evidence thus: "A Being of great but limited power, how or by what limited we cannot even conjecture; of great and perhaps unlimited intelligence, but perhaps also more narrowly limited than his power : who desires and pays some regard to the happiness of his creatures, but who seems to have other motives of action which he cares more for, and who can hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that pur- pose only." In his "Autobiography," cli. ii., he says of his fa- ther, James j\Iill, "I have heard him say, that the turning point of his mind on the subject was reading Butler's Analogy. That work, of which he always continued to speak with respect, kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, a believer in the divine authority of Christianity ; by proving to him, that what- ever are the difficulties of believing that the Old and New Tes- taments proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and good being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way of the belief, that a being of such a character can have been the Maker of the universe. He considered Butler's argu- ment as conclusive against the only opponents for whom it was intended. Those who admit an omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent j\Iaker and Ruler of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity but what can with at least equal force be retorted against themselves. Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the conviction, that concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known." We answer — 1st. It is unquestionably true that God has not created the universe for the single purpose, or even for the chief purpose, of promoting the happiness of his creatures. Our reason and observation, and the Christian Scriptures, unite in revealing as far higher and more worthy ends of divine action the manifestation of his own glory, and the promotion by edu- cation and discipline of the highest excellence of his intelligent 44 THE BEING OF GOD. moral creatures. It is evident that the operation of inexorable general laws, and the mystery and sufferings incident to this life, may be the most effective means to promote those ends. 2d. The direct intention of all the organs with which sensi- tive creatures are endowed is evidently to promote their well- being; pain and misery are incidental. Even the sudden vio- lent deaths of irrational animals probably promote the largest possible amount of sentient happiness. 3d. Conscience has taught men in all ages that the sufferings incident to human life are the direct and deserved consequences of human sin, either penalties, or chastisements benevolently designed for our moral improvement. 4th. The origin of sin is a confessed mystery, relieved however by the consideration, that it results from the abuse of man's highest and most valuable endowment, responsible free agency, and by the tact revealed in the Chris- tian Scriptures that even sin will be divinely overruled to the fuller manifestation of the perfectioiis of God, and to the higher excellence and the more perfect happiness of the intelligent creation. 5th. The inequalities of the allotments of providence, and the disproportion between the well-being and the moral characters of men in this life, results from the fact that it is not the scene of rewards and punishments, and that different characters and different destinies require a different educational discipline, and it points to future readjustments revealed in the Bible (Ps. Ixxiii.). 6th. Neither the teleological nor the moral argument involves the assertion that "vvith our present knowl- edge we are able to discern in the universe the evidences of either infinite or perfect wisdom or goodness. These are both indicated as matters of fact, and general characteristics of na- ture. But our discernment of both is necessarily limited by the imperfections of our knowledge. Even in the judgment of rea- son alone the infinite probability is that what appears to us anomalous, inconsistent either with perfect wisdom or perfect goodness, will be found, uj^on the attainment of more adequate information on our part, to illustrate those very perfections which we have been tempted to think they obscure. 11. State the Scriptural Evidence. Since man is a finite and guilty and morally corrupt creature it is unavoidable that the self-manifestations of God in nature should be imperfectly apprehended by him. That supernatural revelation which God has disclosed through an historical process of special interventions in chronological suc- cessions, interpreted by a supernaturally endoAved order of prophets, and recorded in the Christian Scriptures, supple- ments the light of nature, explains the mysteries of provi- THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT. 45 dence, and furnishes ns witli the principles of a true theodice. Tlie God whom nature veils while it reveals him, stands before lis unveiled in all the perfection of wisdom, holiness, and love in the person of Christ. He who hath seen Christ hath seen the Father. The truth of Theism is demonstrated in his per- son, and henceforth Avill never be held except by those who loyally acknowledge his Lordship over intellect and conscience and life. 12. State the principle upon luliicli the A priori arguments for the existence of God rest, the value of the prindjjle, and the p)rin- cipal forms in ivhich they have been presented. An a posteriori argument is one which logically ascends from facts of experience to causes, or principles. Thus by means of the preceding arguments we have been led from the facts of consciousness and of external nature to the knowl- edge of God as an intelligent and righteous personal spirit, the powerful, wise, and benevolent First Cause and jNloral Governor. An a pjnori argument is one which proceeds from the necessar}'- ideas of reason to the consequences necessarily deduced from them, or the truths necessarily involved in them. It is certain that the intuitions of necessary truth are the same in all men. 'Hiey are not generalizations from experience, but are presupposed in all experience. They bear the stamp of universality and necessity. They have objective validity, not depending upon the subjective state of personal conscious- ness, nor depending upon the nature of things, but anterior and superior to all things. What then can be the ground of eternal, necessary, universal, unchangeable truth, unless it be an infinite, eternal, self-existent, unchangeable nature, of whose essence they are. We have seen that our reasons can rest only in a cause itself uncaused. An uncaused cause must be eternal, self-ex- istent, and unchangeable. We have in our minds ideas and intuitions of infinity and perfection, as well as of eternity, self- existence, and immutability. "These, unless they are wholly delusive — which is what we are unable to conceive — must be predicable of some being. The sole question is. Of what being? It must be of him who has been proved to be the First Cause of all things, the source of all the power, wisdom, and good- ness displayed in the universe. It can not be the universe itself, for that has been shown to be but an effect, to have before and behind it a Mind, a Person. It can not be our- selves, or any thing to which our senses can reach, seeing that we and they are finite, contingent, and imperfect. The author of the universe alone — the Father of our spirits, and the Giver 46 THE BEING OF GOD. of every good and perfect gift — can be uncreated, and uncon- ditioned, infinite, and perfect. This completes the idea of God so far as it can be reached or formed by natural reason. And it gives consistency to the idea. The conclusions of the a "pos- ieriori arguments fail to satisfy either the mind or the heart until they are connected with and supplemented by, the intui- tion of the reason — infinity. The conception of any other than an infinite God — a God unlimited in all his perfections — is a self-contradictory conception which the intelligence refuses to entertain."— Dr. Flint, "Theism," p. 291. 1. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109), in his '"'■ Monologium and ProsJogimn" states the argument thus: We have the idea of an infinitely perfect being. But real exist- ence is a necessary element of infinite perfection. Therefore an infinitely perfect being exists, otherwise the infinitely per- fect as we conceive it would lack an essential element of perfection. 2. Des Cartes (1596-1650) in his ^^ IlecUiationcs de prima pMIosophia" prop. 2, p. 89, states it thus: The idea of an infinitely perfect being which we possess could not have orig- inated in a finite source, and therefore must have been commu- nicated to us by an infinitely perfect being. He also in other connections claims that this idea represents an objective reality, because (1) it is pre-eminently clear, and ideas carry convic- tion of correspondence to truth in proportion to their clearness, and (2) it is necessary. 3. Dr. Samuel Clarke, in 1705, published his "Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God." He argues that time and space are infinite and necessarily existent. But they are not substances. Therefore there must exist an eternal infinite substance of which they are properties. The Principal Anti-Theistic Theories.


Question: What  is  Atheism  ?

Answer: Atheism, according to its etymology, signifies a denial of the being of God. It was applied by the ancient Greeks to Socrates and other philosophers, to indicate that they failed to conform to the popular religion. In the same sense it was applied to the early Christians. Since the usage of the term Theism has been definitely fixed in all modern languages, athe- ism necessarily stands for the denial of the existence of a per- sonal -Creator and jMoral Governor. Notwithstanding that the belief in a personal God is the result of a spontaneous recog- nition of God as manifesting himself in consciousness and the works of nature, atheism is still possible as an abnormal state of consciousness induced by sophistical speculation or by the indulgence of sinful passions, precisely as subjective idealism is ANTI-THEISTIC THEORIES. 47 possible. It exists in the following forms: 1. Practical, 2. Spec- ulative. Again Speculative Atheism may be (1) Dogmatic, as Avhen the conclusion is reached either (a) that God does not exist, or (IS) that the human faculties are positively incapable of ascertaining or of verifying his existence (e. ^., Herbert Spencer, "First Principles," pt. 1). (2.) Skeptical, as when the existence is simply doubted, and the conclusiveness of the evi- dence generally relied upon is denied. (3.) Virtual, as when (ffl.) principles are maintained essentially inconsistent with the existence of God, or with the possibility of our knowledge of him : e. (/., by materialists, positivists, absolute idealists. (&.) When some of the essential attributes of the divine nature are denied, as by Pantheists, and by J. S. Mill in his " Essays on Eeligion." (c.) When explanations of the universe are given which exclude (a^) the agency of an intelligent Creator and Governor, (6') the moral government of God, and the moral freedom of man, e. g., the theories of Darwin and Spencer, and Necessitarians generally. See Ulrici, "God and Nature" and "Eeview of Strauss"; Strauss, "Old and New"; Buchanan, " Modern Atheism " ; Tulloch, "Theism"; Flint, "Theism."


Question: What  is  Dualism  ?

Answer: Dualism, in philosophy the opposite of Monism, is the doc- trine that there are two generically distinct essences. Matter and Spirit in the universe. In this sense the common doctrine of Christendom is dualistic. All the ancient pagan philosophers held the eternal independent existence of matter, and conse- quently all among them who were also Theists were strictly cosmological dualists. The religion of Zoroaster was a my- thological dualism designed to account for the existence of evil. Ormuzd and Ahriman, the personal principles of good and evil, sprang from a supreme abstract divinity, Akerenes. Some of the sects of this religion held dualism in its absolute form, and referred all evil to vXr/, self-existent matter. This principle dominated among the various spurious Christian Gnostic sects in the second century, and in the system of Manes in the third century, and its prevalence in the oriental world is manifested in the ascetic tendency of the early Chris- tian Church. See J. F. Clarke, "Ten Religions"; Hardwicke, "Christ and other Masters"; Neander's " Chiu-ch History"; Pressense, " Early Years of Christianity"; Tennemann, "J\lan- ual Hist. Philos."


Question: What  is  Polytheism?

Answer: Polytheism (*oAu5 and Qsoi) distributes the perfectioms and functions of the infinite God among many limited gods. It 48 THE BEING OF GOD. sprang out of the nature-worship represented in the earliest Hindu Veds, so soon and so generally supplanting primitive monotheism. At first, as it long remained in Chaldea and Arabia, it consisted in the worship of elements, especially of the stars and of fire. Subsequently it took special forms from the traditions, the genius, and the relative civilizations of each nationality. Among the rudest savages it sank to Fetichism as in western and central Africa. Among the Greeks it was made the vehicle for the expression of their refined humanita- rianism in the apotheosis of heroic men rather than the revela- tion of incarnate gods. In India, springing from a pantheistic philosophy, it has been carried to the most extravagant ex- treme, both in respect to the number, and the character of its deities. Whenever polytheism has been connected with spec- ulation it appears as the exoteric counterpart of pantheism. Carlyle, "Hero-worship"; Max Mi!dler, " Compar. Myth.," in Oxford Essays; Prof Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets."


Question: Wliat  is  Deism?

Answer: Deism, from deMs, although etymologically synonymous with theism, from Oeo?, has been distinguished from it since the mid- dle of the sixteenth century, and designates a system admitting the existence of a personal Creator, but denying his controlling presence in the world, his immediate moral government, and all supernatural intervention and revelation. The movement began with the English Deists, Lord Herbert of Cherbury ,(1581-1648), Hobbes (flGSO), Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke (1678- 1751), Thomas Paine (tl809), etc. It passed over to France and was represented by Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. It passed over into Germany and was represented by Lessing and Reimarus {''Wolfenhuttel Fragmentist"), and invading Church and Theology, it was essentially represented by the old school of naturalistic rationalists, who admitted with it a low and inconsequent form of Socinianism, e. g., Eichhorn (1752-1827), Paulus (1761-1851), Wegscheider (1771-1848). It has been represented in America by the late Theodore Parker, and the extreme left of the party known as " Liberal Christians." In Germany mere deistical naturalism gave way to pantheism, as the latter has recently given way to materialistic atheism, e.g., Strauss. See Leland, "View of Deistical Writers"; Van ]\lildert's "Boyle Lectures"; Farrar, "Critical Hist, of Free- thought"; Dorner, "Hist. Protest. Theology"; Hurst, "Hist, of Rationalism"; Butler's "Analogy."


Question: What  is  Idealism?

Answer: " Idealism is the doctrine that in external perceptions the ANTI-THEISTIC THEORIES. 49 objects immediately known are ideas. It has been held vmder various forms." — See Hamilton's " Reid," Note C. "Some of the phases of modern Idealism among the Ger- mans, may be seen in the following passage from Lewes : — ' I see a tree. The common psychologists tell me that there are three things implied in this one fact of vision, viz. : a tree, an image of that tree, and a mind that apprehends that image. Fichte tells me that it is I alone who exist. The tree and the image of it are one thing, and that is a modification of my mind. This is subjective idealism. Schelling tells me that both the tree and my ego (or self), are existences equally real or ideal; but they are nothing less than manifestations of the absolute, the infinite, or unconditioned. This is objective ideal- ism. But Hegel tells me that all these explanations are false. The only thing really existing (in this one fact of vision) is the idea, the relation. The ego and the tree are but two terms of the relation, and owe their reality to it. This is absolute idealism. According to this, there is neither mind nor matter, heaven or earth, God or man.' The doctrine opposed to Ideal- ism is Realism." — "Vocabulary of the Philosophical Sciences," by C. P. Krauth, D.D., 1878.


Question: What  is  Materialism  ?

Answer: As soon as we begin to reflect we become conscious of the presence of two everywhere interlaced, but always distinct classes of phenomena — of thought, feeling, will on the one hand, and of extension, inertia, etc., on the other. Analyze these as we may, we never can resolve the one into the other. The one class we come to know through consciousness, the other through sensation, and we know the one as directly and as certainly as the other; and as we can never resolve either into the other, we refer the one class to a substance called spirit, and the other class to a substance called matter. Materialists are a set of superficial philosophers in whom the moral consciousness is not vivid, and who have formed the habit of exclusively directing attention to the objects of the senses, and explaining physical phenomena by mechanical con- ceptions. Hence they fall into the fundamental error of affirm- ing— (1.) That there is but one substance, or rather that all the phenomena of the universe can be explained in terms of atoms and force. (2.) That intelligence, feeling, conscience, volition, etc., are only properties of matter, or functions of material organization, or modifications of convertible energy. Intelli- gence did not precede and effect order and organization, but order and organization developed by laws inherent in matter develop intelligence. The German Darwinists style that system 50 THE BEING OF GOD. the ^^ mecJianico-caKsal" development of the universe; Huxley says Hfe, and hence organization results from the "molecular mechanics of the protoplasm." We answer — 1st. This is no recondite theory, as some pre- tend, concerning substance. If the phenomena of conscious- ness ai-e resolved into modifications of matter and force, i e., ultimately into some mode of motion, then all ultimate and necessary truth is impossible, duty has no absolute obligation, coirecience is a lie, consciousness a delusion, and freedom of will absurd. All truth and duty, all honor and hope, all mo- rality and religion, would be dissolved. 2d. The theory is one-sided and unwarrantable. In fact our knowledge of the soul and of its intuitions and powers are more direct and clear than the scientist's knowledge of matter. What does he know of the real nature of the atom, of force, of gravity, etc. 3d. The explanation of matter by mind, of force and order by intelligence and will, is rational. But the explanation of the phenomena of intelligence, will, and consciousness as modes of matter or force is absurd. The reason can rest in the one and can not in the other. The soul of man is known to be an absolute cause — matter is known not to be, to be but the vehi- cle of force, and force to be in a process of dispersion. Intelli- gence is known to be the cause of order and organization, organization can not be conceived to be the cause of intelligence. Tyndal ("Athenaeum" for August 29, 1868) says: "The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously: we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one phenomenon to the other. ... In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought as exercised by us has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I thiidc the position of the Materialist is stated as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the jMaterialist will be able finally to maintain this posi- tion against all attacks; but I do not think as the human mind is at present constituted, that he can pass beyond it. I do not think he is entitled to say that his molecular grouping and his molecular motions explain every thing. In reality they explain nothing."


Question: What  is  Pantheism?

Answer: Pantheism (Tcav Os6i) is absolute monism, maintaining that the entire phenomenal universe is the everchanging existence- ANTI-THEISTIC THEORIES. 51 form of the one single universal substance, which is God. Thus God is all, and all is God. God is r6 ov, absolute being, of which every finite thing is "a differentiated and transient ibrm. This doctrine is, of course, capable of assuming very various forms. (1.) The one-substance pantheism of Spinoza. He held that God is the one absolute substance of all things, possessing two attributes, thought and extension, from which respectively the physical and intellectual worlds proceed by an eternal, nec- essary, and unconscious evolution. ("2.) The material panthe- ism of Strauss, "Old and New Faith.' (3.) The idealistic pan- theism of Schelling, maintaining the absolute identity of subject and object ; and of Hegel, maintaining the absolute identity of thought and existence as determinations of the one absolute Spirit. It is obvious that pantheism in all its forms must either deny the moral personality of God, or that of man, or both. Logically it renders both impossible. God comes to self-con- sciousness only in man ; the consciousness of free personal self- determination in man is a delusion ; moral responsibility is a prejudice; the supernatural is impossible and religion is super- stition. Yet such is the flexibility of the system, that in one form it puts on a mystical guise, representing God as the all- person absorbing the world into himself, and in the opposite form it puts on a purely naturalistic guise, representing the world as absorbing God, and the human race in its ever-cul- minating development the only object of reverence or devotion. The same Spinoza who was declared by Pascal and Bossuet to be an atheist, is represented by Jacobi and Schleiermacher to be the most devout of mystics. The intense individuality of the material science of this century has reacted powerfully on pantheism, substituting materialism for idealism, retiring God, and elevating man, as is seen in the recent degradation of pan- theism into atheism in the case of Feuerbach and Strauss, etc. The most ancient, persistent, and prevalent pantheism of the world's history is that of India. As a religion it has moulded the character, customs, and mythologies of the people for 4,000 years. As a philosophy it has appeared in three prin- cipal forms — the Sanckhya, the Nyaya, and the Vedanta. Pan- theistic modes of thought more or less underlay all forms of Greek philosophy, and especially the Neo- Platonic school of Plotinus (1205-270), Porphyry (233-305), and Jamblicus (t333). It reappeared in John Scotus Erigena (b. 800), and with the Neo- Platonists of the Renaissance — e. (/., Giordano Bruno (flGOO). Modern pantheism began with Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), and closes with the disciples of Schelling and Hegel. Besides pure pantheism there has existed an infinite variety 52 THE BEING OF GOD. of impure forms of virtual pantheism. This is true of all sys- tems that affirm the impersonality of the infinite and absolute, and which resolve all the divine attributes into modes of caus- ality. The same is true of all systems which represent provi- dential preservation as a continual creation, deny the real effi- ciency of second causes, and make God the only agent in the universe, e. (7., Edwards on "Original Sin," pt. 4, ch. 3, and Emmons. Under the same general category falls the fanciful doctrine of Emanations, which was the chief feature of Oriental Theosophies, and the Hylozoism of Averroes (tll98), which sup- poses the co-eternity of matter and of an unconscious plastic animamundi. See Hunt, "Essay on Pantheism," London, 1866; Saisset, "Modern Pantheism," Edinburgh, 1863; Cousin, ^'His- tory of ]\Iodern Philosophy"; Eitter's "Hist. Ancient Philos."; Buchanan, "Faith in God," etc.; Dollinger, "Gentile and Jew," London, 1863; Max Miiller, "Hist. Anc. Sancrit Lit."


Question: What  is  Rationalism  ?

Answer: A " Naturalist " is one who holds that Nature is a complete self-contained, self-supported sphere in itself, and hence denies either the reality of the supernatural, or that it can be an object of Imman knowledge; and hence denies the necessity, or possibility, or actual fact, of a supernatural revelation. Tlie term "Rationalist" is more general. It includes the Naturalist of every grade, and also all those who while admitting the fact of a divine revelation, yet maintain that revelation, its doc- trines and records, are all to be measured and accredited or rejected and interpreted by human reason as ultimate arbiter. With the Rationalists Reason is the ultimate ground and meas- ure of faith. ' rffits historical sense Rationalism, as a mode of freethink- ing springing up in the midst of the Christian Church itself, giving rise to an illegitimate use of reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures and their doctrines, has always been active in RA TIONALISM. 57 some form, and in one degree or another, and has been signally manifest in a class of the Mediseval schoolmen, and in the disci- ples of Socinns. Its modern and most extreme form originated in Germany in the middle of the last century. The causes to which it is to be attributed were — (a.) The low state of religion pervading all Protestant countries. (&.) The influence of the formal philosophy and dogmatism of Wolf, the disciple of Leib- nitz, (c.) The influence of the English Deists, (r/.) The influ- ence of the French infidels collected at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia. The father of critical rationalism was Sem- ler, Prof, at Halle (b. 1725, and d. 1791). Although personally devout, he arbitrarily examined the canonicity of the books of Scripture, neglecting historical evidence, and substituting his own subjective sense of fitness. He introduced the principle of " accommodation " into Biblical interpretation, holding that be- sides much positive truth, Christ and his apostles taught many things in " accommodation " to the ideas prevailing among their contemporaries. — Hurst, " History of Rationalism." This tendency, afterwards greatly aggravated through the influence of Lessing and Reimarus the Wolfenbuttel Fragment- ist, penetrated the mass of German theological literature, and culminated in the last years of the eighteenth and first years of the nineteenth century. Among its principal representa- tives were Bretschneider, Eichhorn, and Paulus in Biblical, and Wegscheider in dogmatic theology. The two last espe- cially, while admitting the fact that Christianity is a supernat- ural revelation, yet maintained that it is merely a republication of the elements of natural religion, and that Reason is the supreme arbiter as to what books are to be received as ca- nonical, and as to what they mean. Miracles were regarded as unworthy of belief The narratives of miracles recorded in the Scriptures were referred to the ignorance, superstition, or partiality of the writers, and the miracles themselves were referred to natural causes. Jesus was regarded as a good man, and original Christianity as a sort of philosophical So- cinianism. This is what has been historically designated in Germany by the title Rationalism, and more specifically as the Mationalismus Vulgaris, the old, or common-sense Rationalism. After the rise of the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, a new impulse was given to theological speculation, and to Biblical interpretation. This gave rise on the one hand to a reaction towards orthodoxy through the " Mediation Theo- logy " of Schleiermacher, and on the other to a new school of Transcendental Rationalism, the basis of Avhich is a pantheistic mode of thought. It necessarily denies the supernatural, and postulates the fundamental principle that miracles are impos- 58 THE SOURCES OF THEOLOGY. sible. This school, whose head-qnarters was Tubingen, has been most prominently represented by Christian Banr with his Ten- dency Theory, Strauss with his Mythical theory, and Renan Avith liis Legendary theory, to accoiint for the origin of the New Testament writings, while denying their historical basis of fact. This tendency, in various degrees of force, is manifested in the state of theological opinion in England and America, prin- cipally in the School of Coleridge, Maurice, Stanley, Jowett and Williams, and the Broad Church party generally; in Scot- land in Tulloch ; in America by the late Theodore Parker, the school of liberal Christians, and in the general relaxation of faith discernible on every side. "German nationalism," Ilagenbach, Clarke Edinburg Li- brary; "History of German Protestantism," Kahnis, Clarke Ed. Lib. ; " Critical History of Free Thought," A. S. Farrar, New York, D. Appleton & Co. ; " Germany, its Universities, Theo- logy, and Religion," Philip Schaff, D.D. ; "History of Rational- ism," President Hurst, C. Scribner, New York. 6. Into what two classes may all the argumentative grounds of opposition to historical Christianity he grouped? 1st. A priori grounds. These rest upon a false view of the being and nature of God, and of his relation to the world. Thus the Positivist, who confines man's knowledge to Phe- nomena, and their laws of co-existence and sequence; the Deist, who denies the immanence of God in his works, and denies or renders remote and obscure his relation to us as floral Governor, and spiritual Father ; and the Pantheist, who denies his person- ality; and the scientific natm'alist, who sees in nature only the operation of invariable self-executing physical laws; — must all alike deny the possibility and credibility of miracles, must resolve inspiration into genius, and in some wa}^ or other explain away the Scriptures, as historical records of fact. This class of questions has been discussed above. Chapter II. 2d. Historical and Critical grounds. These all rest on the assumed defect in the historical evidence for the genuineness and authenticity of the several books of the canon, and in the alleged discrepancies, and historical and scientific inaccuracies, found in Scripture. This class of questions must be met in the departments of Biblical Introduction, and Exegesis. 7. State the grounds vpon ivhicli it is evident that Reason is not the ultimate source and measure of religious ideas. These are in general three: (1.) A priori. Reason, consid- A SUPERNATURAL REVELATION NECESSARY. 59 ering man's present condition of ignorance, moral degradation, and gnilt, has no qualities which render it competent to attain either (a) certainty or (/>) sufficient information for man's prac- tical guidance, as to God's existence, or character, or relation to us, or purposes with regard to us. (2.) From imiversal ex- perience; unassisted reason has never availed for these ends, but wdien unduly relied upon has always led men, in spite of a neglected revelation, to skepticism and confusion. (3.) As a matter of fact an infallible record of a supernatural revelation has been given, which conveys, when interpreted with the ilhi- minating assistance of the Holy Spirit, information, the knowl- edge of which is essential to salvation, which reason could by no means have anticipated. To establish this argument the following points must be separately established in their order: Ist. A supernatural revelation is necessary for man in his present condition. 2d. A supernatural revelation is possible alike d parte Dei and d parte hominis. 3d. From what Natural Theology reveals to us of the Attri- butes of God, of his relations to men, and of our moral con- dition, a supernatural revelation is antecedently probable. 4th. It is an historical fact that Christianity is such a super- natural revelation. 5th. It is also an historical fact that the present Canon of the Old and New Testaments consist only of and contain all the extant authentic and genuine records of that revelation. 6th. That the books constituting this canon were super- naturally inspired, so as to be constituted the word of God, and an infallible and authoritative rule of faith and practice for men. .8/ Prove that a supernatural revelation is necessary for men in tJieir j^rese^it condition. 1st. Reason itself teaches — (1) that as a matter of fact man's moral nature is disordered, and (2) his relations to God dis- turbed by guilt and alienation. Reason is capable of discov- ering the fact of sin, but makes no suggestions as to its remedy. We can determine a ptriori God's determination to punish sin, because that as a matter of Justice rests on his unchangeable and necessary nature, but can so determine nothing with respect to his disposition to provide, or to allow a remedy, because that, as a matter of grace, rests on his simple volition. 2d. A spontaneous religious yearning, natural and universal, for a divine self-revelation and intervention on the part of God, and manifest in all human history, proves its necessity. 60 THE SOURCES OF THEOLOGY. 3d. Reason has never in the case of any historical commu- nity availed to lead men to certainty, to satisfy their wants, or to rule their lives. 4th. Rationalism is strong only for attack and destruction. It has never availed in any considerable degree in the way of positive construction. No two prominent Rationalists agree as to wliat the positive and certain results of the teaching of rea- son are. 9. Prove that a supernatural revelation is possible both a j)arte Dei, and a parte hominis. As to its being possible on God's side, if Theism be true, if God be an infinite extramundane person, who yet controls the operation of the laws he has ordaii>ed as his own methods, and has subordinated the physical system to tlie higher interests of his moral government — then obviously to limit him as to the manner, character, or extent of his self-manifestations to his creatures is transcendently absurd. All the philosophical pre- sumptions, which render a supernatural revelation on the part of God impossible, are based on Deistic, Materialistic, or Pan- theistic principles. We have exhibited the argument for The- ism in Chapter II. As to its being possible on man's side, it has been argued by modern transcendental rationalists that the communication of new truth by means of a "book revelation" is impossible. That words are conventional signs which have power to excite in the mind only those ideas which, having been previously apprehended, have been conventionally associated with those words. We answer — 1st. We admit that simple ultimate ideas which admit of no analysis, must in the first instance be appre- hended by an appropriate organ in an act of spontaneous intu- ition. No man can attain the idea of color except through the act of his own eyes, nor the idea of right except by an intuitive act of his own moral sense. But, 2d, the Christian revelation involves no new simple ultimate ideas incapable of analysis. They presuppose and involve the matter of all such natviral intuitions, and they excite the rational and moral intuitions to a more active and normal exercise by association with new aspects of our divine relations, but for the most part they nar- rate objective and concrete facts, they explain the application of intuitive principles to our actual historical condition and relations; they state the purposes, requirements, and promises of God. But, 3d, even new simple ideas may be excited in the mind by means of a supernatural inward spiritual illumination acting on the minds of the subject of religious experience. The A SUPERNATURAL REVELATION PROBABLE. Gl work of the Holy Spirit accompanying the written word com- pletes the revelation. An experienced Christian, under the teaching of" the Holy Spirit through the word, has as clear and certain a knowledge of the matter involved in his new expe- rience, as he has of the matter of his perceptions through his bodily senses, 10. Shoio from the data of Natural Theology that in the pres- ent state of human nature a supernatural revelation is antecedently probable. As shown in Chapt. H., Natural Theology ascertains for us an infinite, eternal, wise, and absolutely righteous and benevo- lent personal God. It ascertains also that man created in the divine image is morally corrupt and judicially condemned. It reveals to us man needing divine help, yearning and hoping for it, and therefore not incapable of it, as are the finally lost demons. Therefore all the perfections of God, and all the mis- eries of men, lead to the rational hope that at some time and in some way God may be graciously disposed to intervene super- naturally for man's help, and reveal his character and purposes more fully for man's guidance. 11. Hoiv may it he jyroved that it is an historical fact that Chris- tianity is such a supernatural revelation? The reader must here be referred to the many and excellent treatises on the Evidences of Christianity. Paley's, Chalmers', Erskine's, and Alexander's works on the Evidences; A. S. Farrar's "Critical History of Free Thought'*; Hopkins's "Evidences of Christianity"; Barnes's "Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century"; G. Wardlaw's "Lead- ing Evidences of Christianity"; Hetherington's "Apologetics of the Christian Faith " ; Leathes's " Grounds of Christian Hope"; Row's "Supernatural in the New Testament"; Rogers's " Superhuman Origin of the Bible " ; Christlieb's " Modern Doubt and Cln-istian Belief"; Rawlinson's "Historical Evi- dence of the Truth of the Scripture Records"; Wace's "Chris- tianity and Morality"; Titcomb's "Cautions for Doubters"; Pearson's "Prize Essay on Infidelity"; F. W. Farrar's "Wit- ness of History to Christ." 12. Hoiu cart, it he proved that the accepted Canon of the Old and New Testament consists ordy of, and contains all the authentic a7id genuine records of tJie Christian Revelation ? Here also the reader must be referred to the best treatises on the Canon of holy Scriptures. B. F. Westcott, on " The Canon " and on "Introduction to the Study of the Gospels"; Tischen- 62 THE SOURCES OF THEOLOGY. dorf, "When were our Goppels composed?" E. Cone Bissell, "Historic Origin of the Bible"; Prof. Georg'e P. Fisher, "The Supernatural Origin of Christianity," and " The Beginnings of Christianity." 13. What is the Nature and Extent of the Inspiration of the Christian Scriptures ? See below. Chapter IV. 14. What is the legitimate office of Reason in the sphere of Religion ? 1st. Keason is the primary revelation God has made to man, necessarily presupposed in every subsequent revelation of whatever kind. 2d. Hence Eeason, including the moral and emotional nature, and experience, must be the organ by means of which alone all subsequent revelations can be appre- hended and received. A revelation addressed to the irrational would be as inconsequent as light to the blind. This is the usus organicus of reason. 3d. Hence no subsequent revelation can contradict reason acting legitimately within its own sphere. For then (1) God would contradict himself, and (2) faith would be impossible. To believe is to assent to a thing as true, but to see that it contradicts reason, is to see that it is not true. Hence the Keason has the office in judging the Evidences or in interpreting the Records of a supernatural revelation, of exercising the judicium contradictionis. Reason has therefore to determine two questions: 1st. Does God speak? 2d. What does God say? This, however, requires («) the co-operation of all the faculties of knowing, moral as well as purely intellec- tual, {])) a modest and teachable spirit, (c) perfect candor and loyalty to truth, {d) willingness to put all known truth to pi'actice, (e) the illumination and assistance of the promised Spirit of truth. This is the old distinction between what is contrary to reason, and what is above it. It is evident that it is the height of absurdity for reason to object to an otherwise ac- credited revelation that its teaching is incomprehensible, or that it involves elements apparently irreconcilable with other truths. Because; — (1.) This presumes that human reason is the highest form of intelligence, which is absurd. (2.") In no other department do men limit tlicir faith by their ability to under- stand. What do men of science understand as to the ultimate nature of atoms, of inertia, of gravity, of force, of life ? They are every moment forced to assume the truth of the impossible, and acknowledge the inexplicability of the certain. All speculative infidelity springs out of the insane pride of RELATION OF PHILOSOPHY TO THEOLOGY. 63 the human mind, the insatiate rage for explanation, and, above all, for the resolution of all knowledge to apparent logical unity. Common sense, and the habit of reducing opinions to actual practice, leads to health of mind and body, and to religious faith.


Question: Wlmt  is  Philosopluj,  and  ivhat  is  its  relation  to  Theology  ?

Answer: Philosophy, in its wide sense, embraces all human knowl- edge, acquired through the use of man's natural faculties, and consists of that knowledge interpreted and sytematized by the reason. Science is more specific, relating to some special department of knowledge thoroughly reduced to system. In later days the word Science is becoming more and more defi- nitely appropriated to the knowledge of the physical phenomena of the universe. In this sense Science has for its task the de- termination of phenomena in their classifications of likeness and unlikeness, and their laws or. order of co-existence and succession, and does not inquire into substance, or cause, or purpose, etc. Philosophy is presupposed, therefore, in science as the first and most general knowledge. It inquires into the soul and the laws of thought, into intuition and ultimate truth, into substance and real being, into absolute cause, the ultimate nature of force and will, into conscience and duty. As to its relations to Theology it will be observed — 1st. The first principles of a true philosophy are presupposed in all theology, natural and revealed. 2d. The Holy Scriptures, although not designed primarily to teach philosophy, yet necessarily presuppose and involve the fundamental principles of a true philosophy. Not the infer- ences of these principles drawer out into a system, but the principles themselves, as to substance and cause, as to con- science and right, etc. 3d. The philosophy prevalent in every age has always and will necessarily react upon the interpretation of Scripture and the formation of theological systems. This has been true as to the early Platonism, and the Neo-Platonism of the second age; as to the Aristotelian philosophy of the middle ages; as to the systems of Des Cartes and Leibnitz; of Kant, Fichte, Schelhng, and Hegel on the continent, and the systems of Locke, Reid, Coleridge, etc., in Britain. 4th. The devout believer, however, who is assured that the Bible is the very word of God, can never allo^y his philosophy, derived from human sources, to dominate his interpretation of the Bible, but will seek with a docile spirit and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to bring his own philosophy into perfect harmony with that which is implicitly contained in 64 THE SOURCES OF THEOLOGY, the word. He will, by all means, seek to realize a philosophy which proves itself to be the genuine and natural handmaid of the religion which the word reveals. All human thought, and all human life, is one. If therefore God speaks for any purpose, his word must be supreme, and in so far as it has any bearing on any department of human opinion or action, it must therein be received as the most certain informant and the highest Law. The various departments of Christian Theology have been ennumerated in Chapter I.


Question: What  is  meant  by  ^'■plenary  inspiration"  ?

Answer: A divine influence full and sufficient to secure its end. The end in this case secm-ed is the perfect infallibility of the Script- ures in every part, as a record of f;ict and doctrine both in thouglit and*^ verbal expression. f So that although they come to us through the instrumentality of the minds, hearts, imagi- nations, consciences, and wills of men, they are nevertheless in the strictest sense the word of God. 4. What is meant by the phrase " verbal inspiration" and hoio can it be proved that the loords of the Bible icere inspired ? It is meant that the divine influence, of whatever kind it may have been, which accompanied the sacred writers in Avhat they wrote, extends to their expression of their thoughts in language, as well as to the thoughts themselves. The eff'ect THE CHURCH DOCTRINE. 67 being that in the original autograph copies the language ex- presses the thought God intended to convey with infallible accurac}', so that the words as well as the thoughts are God's revelation to ns. That this influence did extend to the words appears — 1st, from the very design of inspiration, which is, not to secure the infallible correctness of the opinions of the inspired men them- selves (Paul and Peter differed, Gal. ii. 11, and sometimes the prophet knew not what he wrote), but to secure an infalliblef' record of the truth. But a record consists of language. ^-^^^ 2d. J\Ien think in words, and the more definitely they think the more are their thoughts immediately associated with an exactly appropriate verbal expression. Infallibility of thought can not be secured or preserved independently of an infalhble verbal rendering. 3d. The Scriptures affirm this fact, 1 Cor. ii. 13 ; 1 Thess. ii. 13. 4th. The New Testament writers, while quoting from the Old Testament for purposes of argument, often base their argu- ment upon the very words used, thus ascribing authority to the word as well as the thought. — ]\Iatt. xxii. 32, and Ex. iii. 6, 16; ]\Iatt. xxii. 45, and Psalms ex. 1; Gal. iii. 16, and Gen. xvii. 7. 5. By lohat means does the Church hold that God has effected the result above defined ? The Church doctrine recognizes the fact that every part of Scripture is at once a product of God's and of man's agency. The human writers have produced each his part in the free and natural exercise of his personal faculties under his historical conditions. God has also so acted concurrently in and through them that the whole organism of Scripture and eveiy part there- of is his word to us, infallibly true in the sense intended and_ absolutely authoritative. God's agency includes the three following elements: Ist. His Providential agency in producing the Scripture^ The whole course of redemption, of wdiich revelation and inspi- ration are special functions, was a special providence directing_ the evolution of a specially providential history. Here the natural and the supernatural continuall}^ interpenetrate. But, as is of necessity the case, the natural Avas always the rule and the supernatural the exception ; yet as little subject to accident, and as much the subject of rational design as tJie natural itself Thus God providentially produced the very man for the precise occasion, with the faculties, qualities, education, and gracious experience needed for the production of the intended writing. Moses, David, Isaiah, Paul, or John, genius and character, 6S /xsp//t.4r/ox. nature and grace, peasant, philosopher, or prince, the man, and \vith him each snbtile pei-sonal accident, was providen- tiallv prepared at the proper moment as the necessary instru- mental precondition of the work to be done. 2d. Kevelatiox of trnth not otherwise attainable. "When- ever the writer was not possessed, or could not naturally become possessed, of the knowledge God intended to commu- nicate, it was supernatiirally revealed to him by vision or language. This revelation was supernatural, objective to the recipient, and assm-ed to him to be truth of divine origin by appropriate e^^dence. This direct revelation applies to a large element of the sacred Scriptures, such as prophecies of future events, the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, the promises and threatenings of Gods word, etc.. but it applies by no means to all the contents of Scriptiire. 3d. IsspiRATiox. The writei-^ were the subjects of a plenary divine iufluence, called inspiration, which acted upon and through their natm-al faculties in all they wrote, directing them in the choice of subject and the whole coui-se of thought and verbal expression, so as while not interfering with the natural exercise of their faculties, they freely and spontane- ously produce the very writing which God designed, and which thus possesses the attributes of intallibility and author- ity as above defined. This inspiration difters. therefore, fi-om revelation — (1.) In that it was a constant experience of the sacred writers in all they wi'ote. and it afiects the equal intallibility of all the ele- ments of the writings they produced. While, as before said, revelation was supernaturally vouchsi\fed only when it was needed. (2.) In that revelation communicated objectively to the mind of the wi-iter truth otherwise unknown. While In- spiration was a divine intluence flowing into the sacred writer subjectively, commimicating nothing, but guiding their tacul- ties in their natm-al exercise to the producing an intallible record of the matters of history, doctrine, prophecy, etc., which (jixl designed to send through them to his Church. It diners from spiritual illumination, in that spiritual illu- mination is an essential element in the Si\nctif\-ing work of the Holy Spirit common to all true Christians. It never leads to the knowledge of new ti-uth. but only to the pei'sonal discern- ment of the spiritual beauty and poAver of tinth already re- vealed in the Scriptures. Inspiration is a special influence of the Holy Spirit peculiar to the prophets and apostles, and attending them only in the exercise ot their functions as accredited teachers. ^lost of them were the subjects both of inspiration and spii'itual illu- THE STATEMEXTS OF SCRIPTURE. 69 mination. Some, as Balaam, being unregenerate were inspired, though destitute of spiritual illumination. The Proof of the Church Doctrine of Ixspiration. 6. From icliat sources of evidence is the question as to the nature and extent of the Inspiration of the Scriptures to he determined? 1st. From the statements of the Scriptures themselves. 2d. From the phenomena of Scriptm-e Avhen critically ex- amined. The Statemexts of the Scriptures as to the Nature of their owx ixspiratiox. 7. How can the propriety of irroving the T/ispiration of the Scriptures from their own assertions be vindicated? We do not reason in a circle when Ave rest the truth of the inspiration of the Scriptures on their own assertions. \\e come to this question already belieAT.ng in their credibihty as histo- ries, and in that of their writers as witnesses of facts, and yj the truth of Christianity and in the di^anity of Christ. What- ' ever Christ affirms of the Old Testament, and whatever he ^jtC promises to the Apostles, and whatever they assert as to the divine influence acting in and through themselves, or as to the infallibility and authority of their writings, must be true. | Especially as all their claims were indorsed by God working with them by signs and wonders and gifts of the Holy Ghost. It is evident that if their claims to Inspiration and to the in- fallibility and authority of their wi-itings are denied, they are consequently charged A\-ith fanatical presumption and gross misrepresentation, and the validity of their testimony on all points is denied- When plenary inspii'ation is denied all Chiis- tian faith is undermined. 8. How may the Inspiration of the apostles he fairly inferred from the faxi thai they ivrought miracles? A miracle is a di\^ne sign (^Tjuaiov) accrediting the person to whom the power is delegated as a divinely commissioned agent, ]^Iatt. xvi. 1, 4; Acts xiv. 3; Heb. ii. 4. This divine testimony not only encourages, but absolutely renders belief obligatory. Where the sign is God commands us to believe. But he could not unconditionally command us to beheve any other than unmixed truth infallibly conveyed. 9. How may it he shown that tlie gift of InspAration was prom- ised to the apostles ? 70 INSPIRA TION. Matt. X. 19; Luke xii. 12; John xiv. 26; xv. 26, 27; xvi. 13; Matt, xxviii. 19, 20; John xiii. 20. 10. In ivliat several ways did they claim to have possession of the Spirit? They claim ed — 1st. To have the Spirit in f ulfihiient of the promise of Christ. Acts ii. 33; iv. 8; xiii. 2-4; xv. 28; xxi. 11; 1 Thes. i. 5. 2d. To speak as the prophets of God. — 1 Cor. iv. 1 ; ix. 17 ; 2 Cor. V. 19 ; 1 Thes. iv. 8. 3d. To speak with plenary authority. — 1 Cor. ii. 13; 1 Thes. ii. 13; 1 John iv. 6; Gal. i. 8, 9; 2 Cor. xiii. 2, 3, 4. They class their writings on a level with the Old Testament Scriptures. — 2 Pet. iii. 16; 1 Thes. v. 27; Col. iv. 16; Kev. ii. 7.— Dr. Hodge.


Question: Hoto  uias  their  claim  conjirmed?

Answer: 1st. By their holy, simple, temperate, yet heroic lives. 2d. By the holiness of the doctrine they taught, and its spiritual power, as attested by its efiect upon communities and individuals. 3d. By the miracles they wrought. — Heb. ii. 4; Acts xiv. 3; lilark xvi. 20. 4th. All these testimonies are accredited to us not only by their own writings, but also by the uniform testimony of the early Christians, their contemporaries, and their immediate successors. 12. Show that the ivriters of the Old Testament claim to he inspired. 1st. INIoses claimed that he wrote a part at least of the Pen- tateuch by divine command. — Deut. xxxi. 19-22; xxxiv. 10; Num. xvi. 28, 29. David claimed it. — 2 Sam. xxiii. 2. 2d. As a characteristic fact, the Old Testament writers speak not in their own name, but preface their messages with, "Thus saith the Lord," "The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it," etc. — Jer. ix. 12; xiii. 13; xxx. 4; Isa. viii. 1; xxxiii. 10; Mic. iv. 4; Amos iii. 1; Deut. xviii. 21, 22; 1 Kings xxi. 28; 1 Chron. xvii. 3. — Dr. Hodge.