It is further to be taken into account that there are truths to be believed which are not and cannot be reached by any peculiar shrewdness of intelligence, or by the consecutive deductions of reasoning. Of this description are some of our convictions as to infinity. Of a similar character are many of the doctrines which God has revealed in His Word. In regard to some of these, not only is a deductive reasoning incapable of demonstrating them, reason in its highest degree is incapable of fully comprehending them. When it labours to do so, it is encompassed in darkness, and finds itself utterly at a loss as it would seek to reconcile them with other truths sanctioned by reason or experience. But still, even here, faith is not without reason; for in regard to certain of these truths, the intuitive reason which commands us to believe in them is above all derivative reason; and in regard to truths revealed to us supernaturally by God, reason calls on us implicitly to submit to them as to an intelligence which cannot err.

Reason always demands that we should have evidence, immediate or mediate, in order to believe; but it does not insist that the truth be completely within the comprehension of the reason, or unclouded by mystery of any description. We who dwell in a world where day and night alternate," we who go everywhere in the light accompanied with our shadow, cannot expect to be completely delivered from the darkness. Man is so constituted that he can trust in, admire and love the mysterious. The mind experiences a pleasure in contemplating the dim, the ancient, the mingling of light and shadow. It avoids instinctively the open, uninteresting plain, where all is discovered by one glance of the eye, and delights to lose itself amid a variety of hill and dale and forest, where we catch occasional glimpses of distant objects, or see them in dim perspective. Feeling that a religion without a mystery "would be a temple without its God," the soul has ever turned away from a cold and rationalistic creed; and it turns toward the doctrines of the Bible, where no doubt there is the brightest light, otherwise we, with our dim eyes, could not see, but where there is also a shade in which truth is perceived faintly and obscurely in the infinity which is spread out before us.

Faith has ever the support of reason; yet it goes far beyond reason, and embraces much which is far above the conceptions of the intellect in its highest excursions. It is because man has a natural capacity of faith in the unseen and unknown, that he is able to cherish a faith in the revealed truths of God's Word. It is because he has the natural gift of faith, that he is capable of rising to the supernatural grace.'

SECT. II.-NATURAL THEOLOGY; THE THEISTIC ARGUMENT.

The idea of God, the belief in God, may be justly represented as native to man. He is led to it by the circumstances in which he is placed calling into energy mental principles which are natural to all. He does not require to go in search of it: it comes to him. He has only to be waiting for it and disposed to receive it, and it will be pressed on him from every quarter; it springs up naturally, as the plant or animal does from its germ; it will well up spontaneously from the depths of his heart; or it will shine on him from the works of nature, as light does from the sun.

But, while the conviction is natural, this does not prove that it is simple, original, unresolvable, unaccountable. The knowledge of distance by the eye is undoubtedly natural to man—there is a provision made in the organism for its attainment, and all who have an eye acquire it; yet it is not original, but the result of a variety of processes, physiological and psychological, which can be pointed out. Our conviction as to God seems to me to be of a like nature; it is not a single instinct incapable of analysis, but is the proper issue of a number of simple principles, all tending to one point. Such being its nature, the process admits of explicit statement and satisfactory defence.

Among metaphysicians of the present day it is a very common opinion that our belief in God is intuitive. In particular this is the view set forth by a school in Germany and in this country which allows to Kant that the speculative reason can find or

It is not to be forgotten, however, that in trust, and especially in all religious faith, which always implies trust, there is an exercise of will, we give the consent of the heart to the assent of the understanding.

devise no valid argument in favour of the Divine existence. Left without mediate proof they have called in a special cognition, intuition, or feeling, under the name of "God-consciousness" or "Divine Faith." If there be any validity in the conditions laid down in this treatise, as to the logic of intuition, those who advocate this view may be called on to show that such an intuition exists; that it is original-that is, incapable of being resolved into anything else; and fundamental-that is, leaning on nothing else. It may be further demanded that they explain the precise law, that is, rule of the intuition's operation. Is it of the nature of an intellectual cognition, or is it a mere feeling, or is it a faith? What, in particular, is the precise object which it perceives and which it reveals, and how much is revealed regarding that object? Is God revealed as a being, or a person, or a substance? Is he revealed as a power or a cause? or is he revealed simply as a life? Is he revealed as a living God? or as an infinite God? or as a holy, that is, sin-hating God? It behooves those who invoke a separate intuition to reply to such questions as these, in a way that is at least approximately correct; and, in giving the answers, it will be needful to reconcile the replies with the known facts of history, and, in particular, with the degraded views which have been entertained, in most countries, of the Divine Being. If it be a partial or mutilated God that is revealed-say, a bare abstraction without qualities, or a brute force, or a vague life or activity-we are left, after all, to depend on other processes when we would clothe him with perfections. If, on the other hand, it be a fullorbed light, shining in all the glory of wisdom and excellence and infinity that is hung out in the firmament before the mental eye, the question will have to be answered, How have the great body of mankind come to see him in such distorted shapes and in such dark or hideous colours?

I am not convinced that we are obliged to call in a separato intuition to discover and guarantee the Divine existence. I agree, with the majority of philosophers and divines in all ages, that the common intelligence, combined with our moral perceptions and an obvious experience, leads to a belief in God and his chief attributes. But in the process there may be, and there commonly

is, a variety of elements conspiring. In particular, there are both experiential and a priori elements.

I. There are facts involved. These become known to man in the ordinary exercise of his faculties of knowledge. In observing them, he discovers phenomena which bear all the marks of being effects. Everywhere are there traces of plan and purpose; heterogeneous elements and diverse agencies conspire to the accomplishment of one end. They are made, for example, in the organs of plants and of animals, to take typical forms, which it is interesting to the eye, or rather the intellect, to contemplate, and which look as if they were built up by a skilful and tasteful architect. Then every member of the animal body has a purpose to serve, and is so constructed as to promote, not merely the being, but the well-being of the whole. Even in the soul itself there are traces of structure and design. Man's faculties are suited to one another, and to the state of things in which he is placed; the eye seems given him to see, and the memory to remember, and the laws of the association of his ideas are suited to his position, and his disposition to generalize and his capacity of grouping enable him to arrange into classes, in due subordination, the infinite details of nature. If once it be admitted that these are effects, it will not be difficult to prove that they do not proceed from the ordinary powers working in the cosmos. No doubt there are natural agencies operating in the production of every natural phenomenon which may be pressed into the theistic argument; but the agencies are acting only as they operate in those works of human skill, which are most unequivocally evidential of design. In the construction and movements of a chronometer there is nothing, after all, but natural bodies, and the action of mechanical forces, but there is room for the discovery of high purpose in the collocation and concurrence of the various parts to serve an evident end.. It is in the same way that we are led to discover traces of design in the works of nature; we see physical agents made to combine and work, to accomplish what is obviously an intended.

1 The whole theistic argument is expounded with admirable judgment in Buchanan's Faith in God. There is vigorous thinking in Dove's Logic of the Chistian Faith. It is not necessary to do more than refer to the Burnett Prize Essays, by Thompson, Tulloch, Orr, etc.

effect. Just as in the construction of a time-piece we discern traces of an effect not produced by the mere mechanical laws of the parts, so in the construction of the eye we find marks of plan and adaptation which do not proceed from the potency of the coats and humours and muscles and nerves, but which must come from a power above them, and using natural agencies merely as a means to accomplish its end.

Facts illustrative of order and adaptation furnish the stock of the common treatises of Natural Theology. Most important ends are served by having them advanced in great number and variety. For not only do they give a religious direction to physical science, not only do they help the devotion of those who are already believers, not only do they confirm the conviction already produced, they tend to produce the conviction. I am aware that there are intuitions involved in the process, and in particular the intuition of causation. But the intuitions are called forth by facts. It is the discovery of evident effects which evokes the intuition of causality. A son of the desert being asked how he came to believe that a God existed, replied, that he knew it as he knew from traces on the sand that a beast or a man had passed. By all means then let works unfolding marks of design in the universe be multiplied, and let each take up its own department and yield its peculiar contribution. Nor let it be urged that one case is as good as a thousand or a million. There are, I admit, single cases which are decisive,-such, for example, is the construction of the eye,-but in all these the adaptations are numerous, and they should be carefully unfolded. But it is by the number and diversity of instances that the possibility of doubt is precluded. The single trace of a foot in the desert might scarcely have seemed conclusive to the savage; the presence of many would have settled the question beyond all dispute. It is the multiplicity and variety of traces that show so clearly and satisfactorily that nature is the effect of construction. It is a happily ordered circumstance that every man has evidence, and evidence in proportion to the extent of his knowledge. The common man, the peasant, the artisan, is furnished with abundance of traces in the portions of nature which fall under his immediate inspection,—