BOOK II.
THE RELATION OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT TO GOD, OR A DISCOURSE OF INSPIRATION.
CHAPTER I.
THE IDEA AND CONCEPTION OF GOD.
Two things are necessary to render Religion possible; namely, a religious faculty in Man, and God out of Man as the object of that religious faculty. The existence of these two things admitted, Religion follows necessarily, as vision from the existence of a seeing faculty in Man, and that of light out of him. Now the existence of the religious element, as it was said before, implies its object. We have naturally a Sentiment of God. Reason gives us an Idea of Him. But to these we superadd a Conception of Him. Can this definite conception be adequate? Certainly not. The Idea of God, as the Infinite, may exhaust the most transcendent Imagination; it is the highest Idea of which Man is capable. But is God to be measured by our Idea? Shall the finite circumscribe the Infinite? The existence of God is so plainly and deeply writ, both in us and out of us, in what we are and what we experience, that the humblest and the loftiest minds may be satisfied of this reality, and may know that there is an absolute Cause; a Ground of all things; the Infinite of Power, Wisdom, Justice, Love, whereon we may repose, wherein we may confide. This conclusion comes alike from the spontaneous Sentiment, and premeditated Reflection; from the intuition of Reason, and the process of Reasoning. This Idea of God
