_Christian Theology by Milton Valentine, D.D., LL.D Copyright 1906, Lutheran Publication Society Printed Philadelphia, PA. by The United Lutheran Publication House_ Pages 168-202 -------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER I EVIDENCES OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD As all Christian theology rests in this idea of God, the validity of it needs to be sustained and vindicated against all atheistic denial and agnostic distrust. Hence the necessity of keeping in view the _evidences_ that the conception is not illusory, but stands for a reality that is fundamental and forever certain in connection with the existence of the universe. After being subjected to the most rigorous tests under our modern scientific and philosophic progress, these evidences remain in undimin- ished fullness, though the formal presentation of them has been shown to be sometimes faulty. We do not claim, indeed, that this great truth is susceptible of the _kind_ of proof which belongs to the demonstrations of pure mathematical science, immediately _compelling_ the assent of the understanding, but that, nevertheless, it is capable of being established in the same sure, rational certainty which assures all the great duties and practical interests of human life and welfare. Christian theology necessarily holds to a double _source_ of these proofs, be- cause, of necessity, it connects both the world of nature and the phenomena of the redemptive revelation with the being and activity of God. They divide themselves, therefore, under such as appear in the realm of nature and such as are afforded by the special divine self-disclo- sure in Christianity. It is not the purpose of this work to present these evi- ----------End of Page 168--------------------------------- dences at length or in detailed fullness. They are prop- erly studied only in special treatises.[1] It must suffice to indicate simply their general nature and leading forms, suggesting thus their immense range and completeness. PROOFS FROM NATURE By these are meant all that may be discovered by rea- son from the natural constitution of the world. If the idea of God is legitimate at all, the world must be recog- nized as His creation and its constitution and order be credited as the product of His power. Any other rela- tion than this would vacate the fundamental conception of God--especially as it stands in _Christian_ theism. To _be_ God He must be Creator, to whom the earth and man owe their existence and men sustain religious relations. If deity thus involves creatorship, then everything that is made naturally reflects His being and thought. The expression of Himself is to be found everwhere--from atoms up to starry worlds and to the still loftier wonders of the realm of mind. "The earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God." The proper proofs of His existence, therefore, are the sum of all the indications given of Himself in the phy- sical universe, the constitution of the human mind, and the history of mankind. Nothing could be more unrea- sonable than the notion sometimes suggested, that the -------------------------------------------------------- [1] We name a few: The author's "Natural Theology, or Rational Theism" (Boston, 1890); Mahan's "Science of Natural Theology" (Boston, 1867); Cocker's "Theistic Conception of the World" (New York, 1875); J. P. Cooke's "Religion and Chemistry" (Boston, 1864); Fairbairn's "Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History" (New York, 1876); Flint's "Theism" (Edinburgh, 1878); Flint's ----------------End of Page 169-------------------------------- truth of theism is dependent on some single argument, or this, that, or the other form of demonstration. The evidence is as immense, diversified, and cumulative as the inexhaustible range of phenomena which the uni- verse opens to study and interpretation--as boundless as the realm of nature and the reach of reason. If it is fair to affirm a single evidence, there must be innumerable evidences. They appear in thousands of different ways to different minds, approaching the question from differ- ent angles. Theism thus rests its conclusion, not simply on one or several formal arguments, but upon the aggre- gate testimony of the whole world-system and all its particulars, upon the force and consilience of all the indications in nature, thought, and life, as they are found running up and compacting their varied logic in one common demand. Before marking the chief forms into which the evi- dences have been most conspicuously and fairly cast, it is proper to note some considerations which, though not amounting to positive proofs, create distinct and strong _presumptions_ in the direction of the theistic conclusion. They are not the final word, but they open the right of way, and establish an evident and impressive probability as to the sure issue of the completest examination. I. The first of these is the _universality of the idea of God_. The fullest historical and ethnological inquiry justifies the statement that this idea is connatural to man. ------------------------------------------------------------- "Anti Theistic Theories" (Edinburgh, 1879); Janet's "Final Causes" (translated from French, Edinburgh, 1878); Diman's "Theistic Argu- ment" (Boston, 1881); Bowne's "Studies in Theism" (New York, 1879); Harris' "Philosophical Basis of Theism" (Boston, 1883); Fisher's "Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief" (New York, 1902); Bowne's "Philosophy of Theism" (New York, 1887), and "Theism" (Am. Book Co., New York, 1903). ---------------End of Page 170----------------------------------- Wherever the human mind has had its normal and healthy unfolding the idea has appeared. We are safe in saying that there has been no well-authenticated case of a nation or race found utterly without some concep- tion of deity or conviction of a Supreme Being. Even among the lowest tribes are found objects of worship to which divine powers are supposed to belong. Not only has the human mind shown no repugnance to the idea, but has developed it and persisted in it, seemingly under the necessities of human thought. This is a strong pre- sumption of its truth. A conviction that springs so in- evitably from experience and the action of reason in the presence of the phenomena of the world, and is so per- ennial in vitality, is justly viewed as founded on reality. That an idea should be so thoroughly normal to the human mind as this has proved to be, forcing itself into recognition everywhere and in all ages, asserting a virtual omnipresence in the thought and belief of the race under all conditions and changes, and yet be wholly false and illegitimate, a universal but neces- sary mistake, is against all natural and reasonable prob- ability. 2. Another fact of this kind is the _religious instinct_ of the race. This must be mentioned separately, be- cause it is essentially different from that just noted. Beyond the idea of God, found to be so universal, there is the further principle of human nature that shows itself in religious feeling and acts of worship. Deeper than that idea, and operating through it, is the ever-conscious sense of dependence and the need of favor and guardian- ship such as is involved in the idea of deity. If the re- lation of _creatorship_ is legitimately included in that idea, as we must admit that it is, man, made by God, was ---------------End of Page 171------------------------------ made also _for_ God, with a nature calling for fellowship with Him and life sheltered in His care. We may rightly call the religious principle, thus grounded and forcing expression of itself everywhere, a religios _in- stinct_, as it evidently comes spontaneously out of the very framework and set of the mental and moral sensi- bilities. Not only the intellect with its idea of God, but the _heart_ with its feeling of dependence and impulse to worship, shows a constitutional organization for religion. Man worships _something_ everywhere; if he fails to reach a conception of the true God, he gives homage to imag- inary divinities and seeks favor from them. This prin- ciple of worship appears to rise with the characteristics of an organic psychical instinct. Its persistence is even more impressive than its genesis. For it cannot be anni- hilated. It is true that persons averse to the self-control required by spiritual duties and held by love of godless indulgences may _live_, practically, "without God in the world." But this practical atheism, ignoring the claims of the religious life, is no more a disproof of the consti- tutional organization of the human soul for it than is the like practical immorality of thousands of men a dis- proof of the existence of an inherent moral demand. It is also true that speculative philsophies may adopt atheistic theories of the world, but right in the face of these speculative denials, the deeper constitution of man's essential nature, left thus unrecognized and wronged, re-asserts the law of religion, persisting in worship and framing strange cults. History presents conspicuous instances that show how human nature throws back deniers of religion into acknowledgment of religion. Though Buddhism is theoretically atheistic, all the oriental lands over which it has spread are marked --------------End of Page 172----------------------------- by the most developed and multitudinous idolatry. August Comte, who built his "Positive Philosophy: on atheism and a denial of all religious verities, in the end, led by his own emotional nature which his sytem had defrauded, appended his scheme of deifying ideal humanity and framing an elaborate system of worship and rites. Though he rejected religion in the beginning, the necessities of worship of some sort forced the manu- facture of a new religion at the last.[1] Similarly, mate- rialism and materialistic philosophies are found returning on their own path. Displacing God in favor of simply matter and force, evolving from these all the physical and mental phenomena of nature, recognizing no spirit- ual existence in man or supernatural power above him, they yet in the end consent to the fact of the religious necessities of human life, and even proceed to tell us how men may still worship. Failing by their theories to eradicate the religiousness that lies in the very depths of the soul's constitution, they invite it to exercise the religious sensibilities in reverence, homage, and trust in nature, in the universe, as the highest reality of power. The idea of God is replaced by the cosmos. "We de- mand," says Strauss, Haeckel, and others, "the same ------------------------------------------------------------ [1] Referring to Herbert Spencer's posthumous Autobiography, in which the author of the "Synthetic Philosophy" confessed that, as his life drew near its end, he became conscious of a "need" which his own religion of the Unknowable was not able to satisfy, and felt a growing kindness toward those religions whose Object is a Personal God, Mr. W. H. Mallock says: "What is this but an admission on the part of that very thinker who has been foremost in representing belief in any knowable God as superfluous, that belief in a God of this precise kind is the fundamental thing that man requires for his nutriment, and that its place can never be taken by any blind recognition of a Power which science must always leave a featureless and inscrutable mystery?"-- "The Reconstruction of Religious Belief," pp. 129-130. -------------------End of Page 173------------------------------- piety for our cosmos that the devout of old demanded for his God."[1] What is the meaning of this instinct, acting apparently with the uniformity of a psychic law? Do these deep cravings reach out forever only into blank vacancy and to nothingness? Is this necessary worship, clustering around this necessary idea of God, only the acting out of a necessary dream? Is there really no Father in heaven at all, whose hand these needy children are seek- ing to find, and believing that they do find? These deep and abiding instincts must imply the existence of the Divine Being, unlesss human nature be fundament- ally false. That it is thus false, it is utterly unreason- able to believe. For one of the most incontestable facts, established by observation and inductive science, is that every well-defined instinct, wherever found, implies and points to a corresponding reality. Whatever theory as to the origin of things men may adopt, they recognize the fact that a law of adjustment and correspondency everywhere prevails. Nature makes no halves, leaves no parts standing alone, presents no monstrosities of structure in which subjective constitutional necessities and cravings are left without external complement or supply. The eye is answered by the light, the ear by the atmosphere, the lungs by the air, the appetite by food; over against the intellect, and fitting it, are the objects of knowledge; the sensibilities find their subjects ready for them; the will looks out on a real world of voluntary action. Passing on to the instincts, the cer- tainty of their indications and directive action has ever been one of the things for wonder and admiration. As far as scientifically examined, they are not misleading. --------------------------------------------------------- [1] Rudolph Schmid's "Theories of Darwin," p. 191. ----------------------End of Page 174------------------------ Whether they teach the bee to construct its cell, or the beaver its house, or the bird its nest, whether they inform the pigeon of the time and way of its migration, or direct the fishes to the distant waters to deposit their eggs, they are followed safely. They do not mock or point to nothing. Every positive normal instinct expresses a truth and looks to a reality far beyond itself, pointing out the reality through the darkness with almost unerring ray. Not more truly does the lake, reflecting stars from its deep bosom, certify the reality of the starry heavens above it, than do these universal instincts assure the objects which we behold mirrored in them. To look upon the deep _religious_ instincts alone as deceptive and spurious would be utterly unreasonable and unscientific. They, therefore, form a clear and valid presumption for the real existence of the infinite Supreme Being whom they necessarily imply. Reville was right when he said: "It would be irrational in the last degree to lay down the existence of such a need and such a tendency, and yet believe that the need cor- responds to nothing, that the tendency has no goal. Religious history, by bringing clearly into light the universality, the persistency, and the prodigious intens- ity of religion in human life, is, therefore, to my mind, one unbroken attestation of God."[1] 3. Of like import is _the benign influence_ of belief in God. Though utility and truth are different concep- tions, and utility does not make truth, yet it often serves to prove it and helps to find it. For, to a degree that has made the fact both clear and impressive, truth is pro- motive of man's welfare, while error misleads and ------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Bampton Lectures on "The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru," p. 6. ---------------End of Page 175---------------------------------- blights. Falsehood kills, like frost, every precious thing it touches. The channels of error can bear no refresh- ing streams of virtue, order, or happiness. But truth is light, sunshine, and blessed power to the world. It is health and vigor to the mind. It is elevation and pro- gress to society and every human interest. Belief in the existence and government of a Supreme Being has this clear seal of utility. The ideas of God, responsi- bility, divine favor, and divine displeasure, have been potent for justice, veracity, honesty, temperance, purity, and order. They have tended to repress wrong. They have given nerve to moral character--in individuals and communities. Long before the days of Plutarch, who wrote: "I am of opinion that a city might sooner be built without ground to fix it on than a common- wealth be constituted together without any religion or idea of the Gods, or, being constituted, be preserved,"[1] moralists had been feeling that neither personal life nor society could bear the loss of this faith. The strength of this benign influence has always been in direct proportion to the clearness and fullness of the theistic belief. Prevailingly, indeed, the idea of the Supreme Being has been so overlaid by distorting poly- theisms, and His relations to the world and man have been so shrouded in darkness and error as to turn the true fruit, in large measure, into false. Often the notion of God has been so dreadfully misconceived as to pervert re- ligion into conflict with even morality and make it a wast- ing power. But this result attends the falsification of any great and potent truth. The blight becomes propor- tionate to the greatness of truth perverted. But whenever the conception of God has been clear and well ------------------------------------------------------- [1] "Moralia," V., p. 380. -----------End of Page 176-------------------------------- developed, discerning Him as the self-existent Maker and Governor of the universe, infinite in wisdom, power, holiness, and goodness, this faith normally strenthens all the bewt forces of human life and purifies and elevates its joys. The best and loftiest ethical systems the world has ever known are found under the light of the clearest and most positive theism. Under this light the human mind shows its healthiest vigor, the conscience its clearest affirmations and most regal authority. Under it man- hood grows to its noblest forms and shows its finest possibilities. Under it science and philosophy are achieving their grandest successes and nations are grow- ing the freest and strongest. It is hardly a falsehood that is bearing these happy fruits, a thorn that bears these grapes. 4. Of real presumptive force, also, is the further con- sideration that all _the facts and phenomena of the world are best accounted for under belief in God_. No principle of scientific procedure is more fully recognized than that a theory is proved true by thoroughly explaining all the phenomena concerned. It is discredited when it fails to solve all the facts. If is accounts for all, or _best_ accounts for them, it gains scientific authority. Thus a conjecture as to the sun's place in the solar system passed from a mere hypothesis to the rank of scientific truth in astronomy. So, too, a supposition in Newton's mind has come to stand as the truth of the law of gravitation. As it explains all the phenomena, it is accepted as true, despite the fact that gravitation itself is inscrutable. Now the doctrine of God affords the most direct interpretaion of all the phenomena of the known uni- verse--and the only explanation of many of them. Not to speak of the strained methods and manifold --------End of Page 177------------------------------------- incredibilities which mark materialistic and atheistic science in its attempts to trace the self-evolution of mat- ter and energy from chaos to the present world-order, with all its endlessly diversified structures, replete every- where with myriad marks of mind and adaptation to the service of mankind, it is enough to remember that there are not a few of the most integral and essential facts of creation which have thus far utterly baffled all non- theistic solution and before which its science is confess- edly helpless. Illustrations of this helplessness are found in the attempts to explain the transitional steps of nature's ascent at the origin of _life_, of _consciousness_, and _self- determination_. With its most searching light it has neither found nor shown, in the mere energies of nature, how the non-living could create life, how unconscious- ness could generate consciousness, or how force, acting in necessity, could develop self-determination or the free-will of personality. This failure at these great points, at which the world-existence ascends to its high- est and grandest realities, is frankly acknowledged by representative scientists.[1] But we may fairly maintain that the direct solution which the doctrine of a self- existent, ever-living, intelligent free Creator furnishes of these otherwise insoluble problems, is an almost decisive presumption in its favor. To use the words of an able thinker and writer: "It is not rash to say that it is beyond all comparison stronger as an hypothesis which accounts for all phenomena under it than any accepted ------------------------------------------------------- [1] Du Bois-Ramond, in Leipzig Lecture on "The Limits of the Knowledge of Nature"; Johannes Hanstein, in "Das Protoplasma als Traeger der pflanzlichen und thierischen Lebenzoesischen"; Count Saporta, in "Die Planzenwelt vor dem Erscheinen des Menschen"; Lorenz Fischer, in "Ueber das Princip der Organization und die Pflanzenseele. --------------End of Page 178----------------------------------- theory in the science of the physical universe in any department--that of heat, or light, of primal atoms, or of gravity itself."[1] "The simplest conception which ex- plains and connects the phenomena," writes Prof. Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, "is that of the existence of one Spiritual Being, infinite in wisdom, power, in all divine perfections, which exists always and everywhere." But the evidence for this great truth is not permitted to rest alone on these presumptions, strong and impress- ive as they are. There are various evidences that carry a positive demand, in the court of human reason, for recognition of the divine existence. They have taken four chief forms, characterized by distinctive features which come from the parts of nature used as sources of argument and from the logical methods employed. These stand simply for generic types of formal view of nature's witness with respect to the being of God. Sometimes the method is _a priori_, proceeding directly from the ideas which are held to be necessary in the mind's own insight and consciousness. Sometimes it is _a posteriori_, as necessary inference or logical conclusion from observed facts. Commonly the reasoning is found to unite the two methods. Sometimes the argument is based on the existence and phenomena of mind; sometimes on the facts of order, adaptation in physical elements and structure in the natural world. I. The COSMOLOGICAL, or more exactly, the AETIOLOGI- CAL ARGUMENT is, perhaps, logically the first. This rea- sons from the existence of the world as finite, originated, and dependent, to the existence of God, as the necessary unconditioned self-existent cause. It rests upon the ra- tional law of causation--that everything that occurs must ---------------------------------------------------------- [1] Prof. H. N. Day, "Outlines of Ontological Science," p. 257. ----------------End of Page 179--------------------------- have an adequate cause. The law does not assert that _being_, or _all-existence_, must have a cause, but only that originated or _begun_ existence must. That the world has had a beginning is indisputable, and science and philos- ophy are busy only with the question _how_ it came to be. Scientific effort has been intently searching the earth's self-contained records, trying to read the history of its progress and discover how it has become what it is. In all its parts, and as a whole, nature is found finite and conditioned in its being and changes. In this search for the cause of it all, the inexorable demand of the law of causation can never be satisfied till a cause is reached that is not an effect, a _first cause_, a self-existent, absolute cause, one that is not dependent for its being upon any- thing else. The first cause cannot be in the world itself, in any phase or stage of its evolution. An "eternal series" of effects without a cause is as utterly unthinkable as a single effect or change without a cause. Hence the law of causality is satisfied only when the cause of the entire movement and product is reached. This "first cause," thus satisfying the whole world-series of events, being necessarily _self-existent_ by the very fact of its being the first and source of all, must, therefore, be identical with God as the Creator of all. Thus, if self-existence, abso- luteness, and creatorship are true elements of the divine idea, inexorable logic demands God as the cause of this finite, contingent, dependent universe. This argument thus draws the line clearly and sharply between self-existent being and all originated and depend- ent being, and insists that the logic that ascends from the existence of the one to the existence of the other is legitimate and firmly valid.[1] And modern thought ------------------------------------------------------- [1] The criticism of Kant is the only one that has, to any considerable --------------End of Page 180---------------------------- has not discredited, but, if possible, strengthened and confirmed it. For it has left no place for the notion of the eternity of the world; and despite metaphysical questionings, science has come to recognize, with most absolute confidence, the validity and universality of the law of causation for the real system of the world, taken as a whole, as having had a beginning in time. This reasoning is usually lacking in force for direct proof of the _personality_ of God. Its immediate demand is for a "cause," which, it seems, might be interpreted as merely a self existent _something_, possibly a blind, uncon- scious, non-intelligent force, or matter itself.[1] But when -------------------------------------------------------------- number, seemed to leave its validity questionable. His impeachment of it is based on his own peculiar and unsustained doctrine of "phe- nomenalism." This is, in substance, that the human understand- ing, as the faculty of knowledge, reaches only to "phenomena," the world of sense and appearance, as apprehended through experience, furnishing no categories or concepts by which we may ascend, even with the help of the mind's own _a priori_ forms, to a knowledge of supersensible realities or "things-in-themselves," if there be such realities. Reason is held never to attain any knowledge, properly so called, of aught which is not presented to consciousness in and through sensible impressions. The "law of causality" itself is emptied of all notion of power or efficiency for the effects, and reduced to simply a time-relation or order of sequence, of only subjective value, a law of our empirical _apprehension_ or of _appearance_, and applicable only to the world of temporal phenomena and experience. Of course, when this law of causation is thus voided of that which is its essential and deep- est idea and conceived to be of such limited applicability, it cannot, under this false and mutilated conception, present the logical reach that will make plain the necessary relation of the finite, conditioned world to a self-existent, absolute first cause. But the rectification, by later and more thorough philosophical thought, of Kant's agnostic phenomenalism, and of his inadequate presentation of the law of cau- sation, has more than given back the wonted force of the cosmolog- ical proof. The trenchant criticism has served to bring out its invin- cible logic. [1] This underlies the speculative interpretaions of Schopenhaur and Von Hartmann. --------------------End of Page 181---------------------------- the argument is analyzed in its essential implications it is, in fact, found to carry its force far toward decisive proof of a divine personality. For, first, the first cause must be a _free_ cause; for that which is first alone is, and can be, truly unconditioned, self-existent, and self-determining. Secondly, a _free_ Cause must be an _intelligent_ Cause. For we never reach the sphere of freedom, or self-direct- ive choice, until we emerge from the material, until we leave matter and reach _mind_. By consent of all great thinkers, self-determining being, being containing in itself the cause of its own activity, is necessarily con- ceived of as _Mind_, or intelligent Will. Matter, so far as known, acts under the fixed laws of necessity. Hence a self-determining personal Spirit or Mind, an intelli- gent Will, must be the first or _originating_ Cause. Log- ical requirement thus compels us not only to assert the existence of a first, independent Cause, but to regard that Cause as a self-existent Personality. The cosmological reasoning thus prepares the way and suggests the truth which the teleological argument more definitely reveals and establishes. 2. THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. Found among the earliest forms of theistic reasoning, this remains one of the most prominent and impressive. It is usually known as the proof from "design" or "final causes." Its pecu- liarity is that, while based, as is the cosmological, on the principle of causation, it considers specifically the marks of _order and purpose_ everywhere in nature. Teleology, or clear adjustment of structure to predetermined ends, is so omnipresent a reality in the world that we are never out of sight of it. It is traceable in every part of nature, and in many parts so clearly and definitely that there can be no denial of it without violence to the spontaneous ----------------End of Page 182----------------------------- and normal judgments of the human understanding. It seems to be co-extensive with the highest law of the uni- verse. Teleology is, indeed, the great _fact_ which makes the universe a cosmos instead of chaos, adapted to the compre- hension and uses of the intelligence with which it has been crowned, and through which it becomes an intelligible and justified creation. Tracing the harmonies of nature's order, the regularity and constancy of its processes, and the subserviency of each part and of the whole to the use of the race, we are warranted in looking upon the world, and even the universe, as a "thought," the realization of a mental ideal, with purpose or intent shining through it everywhere, from its primary adapted atoms, acting like "manufactured articles," up through all the aggre- gations in which the atoms are built into a cosmos. The argument simply arrays before the view these clear marks of design, these pervisive adaptations, with which nature is jeweled, as found in common observation and revealed by the various sciences, and draws the direct conclusion. For the necessary correlate to all this is a _Thinker_, as the Creator of the world. The excellence of the argument is that the conclusion is directly and inevitably to the _intelligence and personality_ of the self- existent First Cause. It is fair to say that this form of proof, so conspicuous in the history of theistic reasoning, has been assailed by severe criticism in some modern philosophies and forms of speculative science. Most thorough examination, however, bestowed upon the three chief objections to its validity has made it clear that the criticism has failed either to remove the foundations of the argument or weaken the certainty of its conclusion. The first objection sought to impeach the correctness ----------End of Page 183-------------------------------- of the major premise of the teleological syllogism, viz.: "Whatever bears marks of design had an intelligent author." This has been alleged to be a mere inference, hastily drawn from experience with respect to the pro- ducts of human industry.[1] It has been declared to be "an outrageous stretch of inference," and the allegation is made that we have no right to assume that because we know from experience that houses, ships, watches, etc., are due to purpose, this, therefore, is the only cause that can produce orderly arrangement, and that, for aught we know, there may be other causes besides mind for it. But over against this suggestion of some other source than mind for nature's "orderly arrangement," stands the unquestionable fact that intelligence is at once the natural explanation of adaptation of means to ends and _the only source of it which we know_. We do know intelligent will as the source of purposive structures, and we know of no other. No search through all the domain of experience, nor around the entire horizon of the realm of rational thought has helped us toward dis- covery of any other. No other is conceivable. The suggestion of it is absolutely gratuitous. Mind is left as the only known cause of specialized adaptations and structure. It is surely scientific to follow where the whole induction points. It is absurdly irrational to reject this in favor of some utterly unknown and incon- ceivable possibility.[2] A second objection has assailed the minor premise of the syllogism: "The world shows marks of design." This criticism has called in question the trustworthiness -------------------------------------------------------- [1] Hume, "Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion;" J. S. Mill, "Three Essays on Religion." [2] Discussed at length in chapter iv. of Author's "Natural Theology." -----------End of Page 184-------------------------------- of these "marks" by an effort to interpret them as but illusory appearances transferred and imposed by our subjective experience. Numerous speculative hypoth- eses, breaking away from popular and normal thinking, have treated them in this way, and sought to depict the world-existence, both inorganic and organic, including man, as formed without the agency of purposive intelli- gence in its construction. They allege that nature may be all that it is at present without the action of any predetermining thought. Physical organs and organ- isms are not made for use; the use is only a result of what the organ has come to be. But from the ancient notion of crediting all these things to the "fortuitous con- course of atoms" down to the latest form of materialistic evolution, there has not been the least success in hushing universal nature's teleologic language nor in changing the normal judgment of human reason as to the truth- fulness of that language. The earth has been too deeply and distinctly moulded into the forms of rational adaptation to useful ends to allow belief that it is all only an illusory imposition of our too busy contructive fancy. Moreover, the human mind has too strong a recognitive sense for the peculiar working and products of mind _as such_, to fail to recognize and own its own everywhere, discriminating it by direct insight and fel- lowship from every other kind of working. The failure of the evolution hypothesis, in its pure materialistic and atheistic formulations, to obtain or hold confidence, has not been due only to the large fact that it has utterly failed to account for the various great steps of progress and ascent in the world's order, but much more because it contravenes the normal and invincible teleological judgment of the world's scholarship. Only as evolu- -----------End of Page 185------------------------------ tionism has incorporated a thorough and emphatic tele- ology has evolution found extended acceptance. The third cricicism has aimed its effort against the _conclusion_ as unwarranted by the premises. Even ad- mitting nature to abound in true marks of design, and conceding the full demand of the law of causation, it asserts that these premises do not _reach_ to theistic proof. There are two types of this criticism. One of them, based purely on the fact of "design" in nature, alleges that, as the amount of design is limited, it applies only to the "forms" of creation, not to the question of "sub- stance," and hence its logical conclusion calls only for an _artificer_ for the world and not a _Creator_, a _former_ and not an absolute _First Cause_.[1] The other, basing itself on the reality of the cosmos viewed as a _total_, with respect to both form and substance, and reminding that, after all, the universe is only _finite_, affirms that we go beyond warrant of the law of causality when, from this limited product, we conclude to "the _Infinite_" as the necessary cause. So far as theology employs the metaphysical "Infinite" as the designation of God it falls short of proof. All that the finite world demands is an _adequate_ cause. But admitting the force of both forms of the criticism as far as they are valid, they by no means annul the teleological argument, nor set aside its decisive reach. For it still gives an intelligent author or "cre- ator" for all the "design" or purposive reality in the universe; and the best scientific and philosophic judg- ment is obliged to make this "design" omnipresent in nature's material, structures, and _action_, holding it to be a reality of the _substance_ as well as of the "forms" ---------------------------------------------------------- [1] For this criticims see Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (Max Mueller's Trans.), pp, 499-507. ---------------End of Page 186------------------------------ of existence. This makes design coextensive with the universe--it being radically, and, as a whole, the em- bodiment of a thought--and transfers its Maker from the position of an architect to that of a Creator in _abso- lute_ sense. And though this universe is still only finite, modern astronomy shows it to be in truth so great that no limits are found to it; in fact, it is the most impressive suggestion of infinitude the human mind possesses, and hence the "adequate" First Cause and intelligent Creator becomes inconceivably great. And thus since the argu- ment still legitimately gives us the Creator of the heavens and the earth and _our_ Creator, it fully suffices to estab- lish the essential element in the theistic conclusion. For, the whole question here is simply whether the actual existence of the universe, with signs of con- ditioned being everywhere and pervaded from atoms to globes and highest organisms with purposive adaptation, requires the existence of a Creator. "Creator of the universe" to which we belong is but another name for God. The question how great He is, and whether He is to be identified with "the infinite," of idealistic meta- physics, is a further problem which is to have its own answer without disturbing the sufficient conclusion already certified. The effort of non-theistic _evolutionism_, though worked with great talent and all the apparatus of science, to show how the seeming teleology of nature may be illusory, and all its order and teeming adaptations may be due to a blind self-contained evolution of matter and energy, from homogeneity to heterogeneity, through immense ages of time, out of inherent potencies, through survival of the strongest or best forms of existence, generating life and consciousness and intelligence, and --------------End of Page 187----------------------------- reaching the present world-order and man, cannot justly be characterized otherwise than as a failure. To say nothing about the other innumerable blanks and breaks and chasms which have to be crossed or bridged by the use of constant "suppositions" or hypothetical possi- bilities, idealized as make-shifts in the absence of facts, all along the theoretical world-building, science con- fesses that this naturalistic evolution has been able to give no explanation of the great and most certain of all the ascending transitions, from lifelessness to life, from unconsciousness to conscious, intelligent mind, from necessity to free-will. Surely this purely materialistic evolutionary hypothesis, with all its constituent and immense assumptions, suppositions built on suppositions, cannot be claimed to possess a tithe of the force that belongs to the teleological argument, which it is invented to set aside. But its absolute futility becomes evident in the further fact that the hypothesis rests upon the absurd assumption that all nature's order, beauty, and utility are the product of _chance_. For, the explana- tion that it gives for nature's progress and improvement in organizations, from the lowest to the highest, is based on _accidental_ variations, preserved and strengthened by the blind action of environment under which the useful survive and the inferior perish--"haphazard improve- ments upon haphazard variations preserved by haphazard conditions." No design whatever guides the movement. Chance is no denial of cause, but of design. It means mere _coincidence_, a fortuitous result of forces without purpose. Put under the light of a mathematical exposition of the play of chance permutations, it becomes sure that there would be countless millions to one against the possibility of all the molecules and parts, say, of the human eye, ---------------End of Page 188---------------------------- coming together in construction of this organ of vision. This even for the production of a single eye; but for the continued regular formation of billions of eyes, genera- tion after generation as ages pass on, and for all the other constructions and uniformities of the total human organization by which we live and move and have our being, the chances against it mount to positive infinity, and show this chance doctrine to be infinitely absurd. Yet this infinitely absurd notion of chance is the only alternative to the admission of design. There is no rational evading of the recognition of design, and so all the rest of the argument stands. 3. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. The germs of this were involved in Plato's doctrine of "ideas," but it was first formulated by Anselm in the eleventh century. From the existence in the human mind of the idea of a "most perfect being," it concluded that the most perfect being exists--because real existence is a necessary part of the idea of the most perfect being. Descartes, Bishop Butler, Leibnitz, Cousin, and many other eminent writers have used this method of argument; but, standing alone, it has often been shown to be unsound, in confounding real objective existence with the simple idea of it in the mind. A mental concept in itself by no means always assures the corresponding objective reality, whether the concept by of a most perfect being or of any particular lower grade. Existence _in re_ is not a quality of an idea, as the idealizations of men perpetually make manifest. But, though radically deficient in itself, the argument obtains valid force when the concept is viewed not merely with respect to its own _content_, but espe- cially with respect to the _necessity_ of the human mind's thinking it. Not only must the mind, in order to think -----------------End of Page 189--------------------------- of God rationally and fully, think of Him as a being of highest perfections and self-existent, but from the indu- bitable existence of the finite and dependent world, as forced upon the universal experience, the thought is a _necessary_ one. The mind is _compelled_ to think of such a being as the intuitively necessary corrrelate of the world-existence. So, what the mind _must neces- sarily think_ and must think as _necessarily existing_, can hardly be doubted. This inclusion, however, of the element of _necessity_ in the concept, which thus gives validity and cogency to the argument, while com- pleting it, also modifies it into close assimilation with the cosmological proof and the presumption from the universality of the idea of God. The whole force of the proof, as becomes evident, rests in the fact that, the mind being what it is and the world being what it is, the idea of God as a self-existent being neces- sarily arises. For the actual existence of real being necessitates the reality of self-existent being _somewhere_ --either in the actual of experience itself, or back of it. Thus, from the notion of "being," taken as real being, must arise the truth of self-existent being. That self-existent Being is God. He is the funadmental neces- sity of human thought. But thus, as is apparent, the ontology of this argument must cover that of the finite cosmos as well as of the idea of the "most perfect being."[1] ------------------------------------------------------------ [1] Kant's criticism of the ontological proof, represented often as de- structive of it ("Critique of Pure Reason," pp. 477-486), applies only to the earlier form. His own philosophy, however, deserves credit for helping to establish the truth of the _necessity_ of the idea of God. His "pure reason," indeed, by the false rupture and isolation from the data of experience in which it was held, could not allow him to accept any logical premise from empirical knowledge, and so left the argu- ment helpless in an incompetent and imprisoned subjectivism. But ---------------End of Page 190----------------------------------------- This method of reasoning, however, besides being too metaphysical for general apprehension, fails to exclude pantheistic conceptions, or make clear the distinction between God and the universe. 4. THE MORAL ARGUMENT, drawn from the facts of conscience and ethical law in the world. It may take different shapes, according as it reasons directly from the existence of conscience or from the course of history, with their realities of moral law and necessary presup- positions of a moral law-giver. The first form takes the simple fact of conscience in man, the perception of the distinction between right and wrong, with sense of obligation, a law of duty incorpo- rated with and made constituent of his own nature, as a direct evidence of the existence of a moral Ruler. For the constitution of human nature, rising through the capa- cities of knowledge, sensibility, and self-determination, reaches its highest ascent in this endowment enthroning the principle of duty and responsibility. Examination of the nature and action fo the endowment makes it plain that this law of righteousness is not a fiction created by the mind or at the will of men, but a reality belonging to the order of the world as objectively constituted--not produced, but _perceived_ by the conscience. It is not made by man, but finds him--finds him through the in- telligence by which he is informed of the realities to which he must adjust his life. Moral law stands for a reality that rays itself into view in the human reason, whether men will or not. It does not come at the call -------------------------------------------------------- when his philosphy recognizes the "practical reason," or the realm of "experience" and its necessities he vindicates the right and authority of that experience to furnish guidance for conclusions as to the highest truths and duties of life. ----------------End of Page 191--------------------------- or desire, or even at the consent of man. It imposes itself and its high behest upon him. It speaks to his intelligence; it appeals to his will and commands his obedience. This moral law, the grandest phenomenon in the human consciousness, calls for the recognition of a divine Lawgiver in the Creator. The second form turns its eye upon _history_, and traces the presence and action of moral law in the broader relation of consequences. It takes note that these con- sequences make certain that there is "a power above us, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness" in the world, and a clear retributive principle which fulfills the ancient affirmation of a "Nemesis" for wrong doing. History becomes a revelation of God, not as exhibiting within the limits of present human life a complete recom- pense to virtue or punishment upon guilt, but as disclos- ing a world-constitution established and maintained in the interest of righteousness. Goodness evokes esteem and favor, while crime awakens reprobation and entails loss of respect and confidence. Righteousness unites society in the strength, happiness, and propserity of good order; wickedness brings the strifes, collisions, and desolaltions of anarchy and violence. Virtue is made strength and power to nations; vice and immorality insure decay and overthrow. The funeral of the nations has been the wit- nessing processsion of avenging consequences for viola- tions of moral order. The voice of history is a perpetual testimony that above the tumultuous wrongs and con- fusions with which human freedom fills the advance of time, there presides a Power that seeks the ascendency of the principle of righteousness, smiling on its observance, and often smiting its violation with rebuking judgments. In all fairness of logic, this moral rulership must be re- -----------------End of Page 192---------------------------- garded as one with the Supreme Mind, whose thoughts and purposes are so incontestable in the aggregate cos- mical plan and movement. A third form considers especially the _mixed_ condition of things under the moral administration, in which _righteousness so often fails to receive its due measure of happiness_. Man finds in his own being a clear and in- dubitable organization or intention for two ends--_char- acter_ and _enjoyment_, or _happiness_. To the one end, "character," he is bound by a "categorical imperative," the "conscience," which holds him sternly under a law of righteousness and duty. This expresses a purpose wrought into the constitution and intent of his being. On the other hand, he is just as truly, though with less absolute bond, adjusted, in the essential cravings put into his nature, to pleasure or enjoyment. He justly judges that he is made for happiness, co-ordinated in the sentient and craving capacities of his soul for felicity. He is tied to it by structural, invincible desire. In the normal experience of life, therefore, these two ends should unite in a true realization. But this demand of human nature largely fails. On the one side, surrender to enjoyment leads astray from the way of duty into utter wreck of character. On the other, obedience to the supreme moral demand, in free fidelity to righteous- ness, is often compelled to forego pleasure, to bear perse- cution, to suffer woful wrong and want. This appar- ently contradictory experience of life is thus _abnormal_, failing to present the true realization and consummation of what rightly belongs to humanity. There is a _supreme good_ for man, which stands in the unity of both holiness and enjoyment. But since the moral demand is primary and supreme, the obligation to it is highest ----------------End of Page 193---------------------------- and absolute. A will controlled by moral law neces- sarily must, in the end, realize also happiness. Fidelity to righteousness deserves it, and the absoluteness of the moral command is an implication that it will be realized. Its realization, however, requires the _existence of God_, whose moral administration alone can carry righteous- ness into its proper rewards. This formulation of the argument--which is essentially that of Kant, who, after his destructive criticism in his "Pure Reason," sought in his "Practical Reason" to restore valid ground for belief in God--is less direct and conclusive than the preceding forms. It has the weak- ness of being more complex and including some steps which are not made absolutely certain, either _a prior_ or by experience. For it tacitly admits that this _summum bonum_ for man can be realized only on _condi- tion_ of the soul's _immortality_. Hence immortality is Kant's first postulate. Further, in resting its conclusion upon the moral demand, it assumes that moral ideals will necessarily, sooner or later, be fulfilled, thus ignor- ing the plain fact of experience that these ideals in many cases are not made good. Nevertheless, the imperative character of the moral claim, and the experi- enced as well as evident _adaptation_ of righteousness-- adding the _teleological_ elemnent--for the highest type of happiness, are sufficient to warrant the conclusion that this absolute moral demand means a moral Lawgiver who, in a future life, will adjust to worthy character its rightful meed of enjoyment. The conclusion comes, however, as a warrant and inspiration to _faith_ rather than as giving a demonstrated certainty. It presents what is highly probable, because of the actual law of duty, enforced by our highest aspirations. ------------------End of Page 194-------------------------- Against the whole moral evidence the only objection requiring notice comes from certain types of evolution- ist contention, which dissolve the moral law into mere custom generated from experiences of utility and incor- porated as instinctive tendencies of thought and feeling into the mental habits of the race from the remote past. The moral demand is made an illusion. No abolute morality or law of unchaangeable righteousness is left. It is doubly obliterated. For, first, the incorporated illusion called "conscience" is made wholly _subjective_, falsely projecting its notion as if an objective and fixed order of the universe. And, secondly, the distinction of right and wrong is made at bottom only a question of _utility or the agreeable_. But this objection altogether fails to invalidate the moral argument. For, its whole plausibility comes from its confounding the broad and ineradicable distinction between the idea of the right and the idea of the useful or pleasurable. They are immutably two different notions. For whatever decision we may in any case make as to the profitableness of a particular act or course of conduct, we necessarily raise the further question: "_Is it right?_" And the highest moral heroism of the race is often exhibited in following "the right" in the face of the contrary appeals of pleasure or gain, selfishness or ambition. Nothing but the shallowest superficiality can accept the notion that the moral demand is nothing but a subjective feeling, in the face of all the perpetual and impressive historic retributive manifestations and movements which the rec- ords of human life are forcing on our knowledge. An objection that offers nothing more valid or sound than this indefensible theory as to conscience can never over- throw the legitimacy and force of the moral argument. --------------End of Page 195------------------------------ It is proper to observe that though the theistic argu- ments have usually been cast into the foregoing types, the evidences in themselves are much more numerous, and, indeed, are capable of receiving an almost infinite diversity of form. For every part and point in nature, thousands on thousands, offers some peculiar reality that demands God for its explanation. The single existence of _life_, appearing after the azoic period of geology, is inexplicable without the living God, having "life" in Himself. The existence of the human _mind_, in itself, makes sure the existence of a _creative_ Mind. The order and laws of the heavenly bodies give us an impressive _astronomical_ argument. The science of numbers, being but the necessary product of possible relations in time and space, when applied to the size, orbits, distances, and periods in celestial and earthly systems, furnishes a striking _mathematical_ argument, illustrating the geo- metrizing work of the Great Author of nature. So, from other special sections of creation. There is hardly a point to which we can turn our eyes and does not offer its plea for God. The full theistic proof is therefore almost infinitely cumulative, consisting of the consilience of all the myriad lines of evidence from the seemingly illimitable universe. In view of it all we may justly claim that if there is any one truth in the world invincibly assured, it is that of the being of God. It is well here, in view of this overwhelming adequacy of the proof, to point out the inadvisability of invoking three or four forms, often offered, whose validity cannot fairly be accepted. We should set them aside. (_a_) The claim that God is known by _direct conscious- ness_. Only the confusion of loose and mystical termin- ology can accept this. In large measure it is connected ---------------End of Page 196--------------------------- with a monistic pantheism which identifies the divine and human essence or substances and holds the divine as coming into self-consciousness in man. It says that to be conscious of one's self is to be conscious of God. But this obliteration of the distinction between the self-existent Creator and the originated being of man is intolerable in Christian theism. Disconnected from pantheism, the claim confounds consciousness with other forms of knowing, and attributes to it a function that does not belong to it, according to all exact definitions. Psychology shows, indeed, that the consciousness may include objective realities, in certain way and to some degree. Some _Non-Ego_ is a co-agent in giving existence to every mental state. But this is through the sense-perceptions. In every act of such per- ception our consciousnesss properly includes three objects, viz.: the mental act or state, the ego acting, and the outer object which determines the act. We may, there- fore, in a sense, speak of being directly conscious of the material world about us and of our fellow-men. But this knowledge of external objects is more properly credited to sense-perception consciously exercised. More- over, with respect to knowing God, reference to this only known human faculty for direct perception of external non-egoistic objects, is entirely inapplicable; for no one will claim that God is an object of sense-perception. Of course, after a person, by some faculty of intellectual apprehension has conceived the idea of God or learned about Him, the _idea_ or the _information_ about Him forms part of the personal consciousness. But, mani- festly this is not a direct consciousness of God, but only a consciousness of the _idea_, of a state or act of mind. But the real question at this point is quite another, viz.: -------------End of Page 197-------------------------------- how the idea or knowledge was given _to_ consciousness. Consciousness is not the discoverer of knowledge or the creator of ideas, but only the inner vision in which men are aware of the ideas and knowledge which the appre- hending and rational faculties perceive and present to it. The idea of God comes into consciousness only through the idea-forming faculties of the mind, as awakened to thought by the phenomena of the world and the expe- riences of life, and as the _reason_ acts in turning the idea into belief. And it is remarkable that the writers who urge this direct "God-consciousness," nevertheless, when attempting an account of it, proceed to offer only sug- gestions that correspond to no known laws or capacities of the mind and mystify by inapplicable phraseology.[1] The whole method so transcends or inverts psychology and allies itself with semi-pantheistic mysticism as to bring doubt instead of certainty into the theistic proof. This cricism of the claim in this relation is not meant to be understood as at all questioning the truth that the Christian believer, after he has been made to _know_ God through His message of revelation and grace and has been brought into a state of fellowship, prayer, and service, may have such conscious experiences of illumination, regeneration, spiritual life, and help, through the divine word, as shall become certifica- tion, even the strongest, both of the being and love of God. But all this is an experience, with a conscious- ness of it, which is the _effect_ of obedience to precedent knowledge reached by the intelligence. (_b_) The assertion of an _immediate intuition_ of God. However evident the divine existence may become under ------------------------------------------------------------- [1] For illustration, "The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief," Dr. G. P. Fisher, pp. 28-31. -----------------End of Page 198----------------------------- proper showing, it is not self-evident. It is not a truth seen to be clear in the simple terms of its statement. Even the ontological argument does not claim that it is so; else no argument would be used--none would be needed. If men stood face to face with God, perceiving Him directly in immediate vision, the whole history of this effort to certify His existence to reason would be inexplicable. There are, indeed, various _a priori_ ele- ments involved in the apprehension of God, such as the intuitions of Causality, Infinity, Self-existence, Time, and Space, but these alone, and simply _as_ intuitions, are neither the concept of God nor of the existence of God. They are simply the material out of which, in connec- tion with our knowledge of the facts of external nature, the judgments of the reason may affirm the existence of God to be necessary. A combination of both intuitional and experiential elements is involved. The very idea of God is built up cumulatively, and the certification, "God exists," stands only as a conclusion from the premises. (_c_) The notion of knowing God by an _immediate feel- ing_ of Him. Though the absurdity of this notion ren- ders it unworthy of notice, the frequent repetition of it calls for a word of repudiation. Psychology makes no truth plainer than that feeling or emotion, _i. e._, the action of the mental sensibilities, depends and waits on knowing, and that a man feels, or can feel, only in so far as he perceives or knows something that excites feeling. Simple feeling, without knowing, is a purely imaginary and really impossible experience. To put it in the forefront as a direct apprehension of God only illustrates the nonsense which good men sometimes sub- stitute for legitimate evidence. -------------End of Page 199---------------------------- (_d_) The agnostic allegation that the divine existence is wholly a matter of _faith_--faith as distinguished from knowledge, and instead of it. Led by false metaphysics many writers have declared that God cannot be _known_ by the finite mind. Some of them claim that we should yet believe in Him. Holding that His being lies wholly beyond our knowledge, that we can know neither _that_ He is or _what_ He is, they claim that we can and ought to apprehend Him by faith. Despite endorse- ment by great names, this view is utterly misleading. It entirely misconceives the real relation between knowl- ege and faith. A mere belief, without a reason or knowledge to warrant it, is arbitrary, and rests on noth- ing. Faith always requires some knowledge or evidence to justify it. This evidence must precede, to beget faith. Belief, unsupported by reason, resting only on and in itself, without warrant and not implied by real knowl- edge, is irrational and without authority. The real re- lation between faith and knowledge is that faith _attends_ and bends with knowledge. In all human thinking-- _e. g._, in sense-perception, by which we know external ob- jects, or in memory, in which we know again past events, we cannot prove the truths involved, but must rest on faith in our faculties, and depend for certitude on their trustworthiness. But we clearly observe that faith arises only _in_ our knowing, and attends it. The knowing is the initial, primary, basal point in the mind's action. This faith in our knowing, or warranted by it, is always a very different thing from the so-called faith which it is proposed to _substitute_ for knowledge, where knowledge is declared impossible. True faith moves on the certifica- tion of knowledge--because we are to live as intelligent beings, children of light and the day. ------------End of Page 200--------------------------------- PROOFS FROM REVELATION. These confirm and establish the evidences from nature. They specially and distinctly certify the ex- istence of God in the _Christian_ idea of the divine Being. It is remarkable, however, that the manner of this proof is scarcely at all that of direct dogmatic declara- tion of the divine existence. This is tacitly _assumed_, at the beginning, as a truth that already has a natural cer- tification and recognition. And the Scripture revelation begins with at once connecting the creation of the world, man, and the heavenly bodies with God's will and power, and presenting the movement of human life and history as under His government and meant for ends of love, righteousness, and spiritual welfare. As God's creational work had already revealed His existence, the super- natural soteriological revelation assumed fundamentally and mainly the form of a redemptive and historical work- ing that should reflect His character and express His will. It was not the truth of His existence particularly that He meant to make known, but to give that view of Himself and of man's relations to Him in which men might be won back to holiness and be saved to the destiny of eternal life. Again, it is God's _working_ that reveals Him. Whatever direct and formal teaching of truth _as_ truth _accompanies_ the movement, the main demonstration of God by this special revelation shines from what He has been _doing_ in the world. Hence, to specify how, in positive way, the Scripture revelation gives proof of God's being, it is evident that every _manifestation_ of Himself in the facts of the re- demptive work and history becomes testimony that He is. Therefore, not only the entire body of evidence that ------------End of Page 201--------------------------------- proves the very fact or reality of a supernatural revela- tion as a whole, but all the specific supernatural phe- nomena verified by its records, individually, become evi- dence of His existence. Thus, the miracles recorded, the prophecies made and fulfilled, the supernatural truths and doctrines disclosed, the supernatural morality taught, the whole phenomenon of Judaism and its history in the world, the supernatural character of Christ, the founding and progress of the Church, the conscious fellowship with God found to attend experience of Christianity, the wonderful and beneficent effects of Christianity on per- sonal, social, and even national life, the whole miracle of Christianity as a unique, supernatural, saving, guiding, permanent power on the earth--all throw their immense and final confirmatory witness to the being and govern- ment of God, already assured by the evidence of nature. --------End of Chapter on Page 202------------------------- This text was converted to ascii format for Project Wittenberg by William Alan Larson and is in the public domain. You may freely distribute, copy or print this text. Please direct any comments or suggestions to: Rev. Robert E. Smith of the Walther Library at Concordia Theological Seminary. E-mail: smithre@mail.ctsfw.edu Surface Mail: 6600 N. Clinton St., Ft. Wayne, IN 46825 USA Phone: (260) 452-2123 Fax: (260) 452-2126