CHAPTER II.
OF THE SENTIMENT, IDEA, AND CONCEPTION OF GOD.
Now the existence of this religious element, our experience of this sense of dependence, this sentiment of something without bounds, is itself a proof by implication of the existence of its object,—something on which dependence rests. A belief in this relation between the feeling in us and its object independent of us, comes unavoidably from the laws of Man's nature; there is nothing of which we can be more certain.[1] A natural want in Man's constitution implies satisfaction in some quarter, just as the faculty of seeing implies something to correspond to this faculty, namely, objects to be seen, and a medium of light to see by. As the tendency to love implies something lovely for its object, so the religious consciousness implies its object. If it is regarded as a sense of absolute dependence, it implies the Absolute on which this dependence rests, independent of ourselves.
Spiritual, like bodily faculties, act jointly and not one at a time, and when the occasion is given from without us, the Reason, spontaneously, independent of our forethought and volition, acting by its own laws, gives us by intuition an idea of that on which we depend. To this idea we give the name of God or Gods, as it is represented by one or several separate conceptions. Thus the existence of God is implied by the natural sense of dependence; implied in
- ↑ The truth of the human faculties must be assumed in all arguments, and if this be admitted we have then the same evidence for spiritual facts as for the maxims or the demonstrations of Geometry. On this point see some good remarks in Cudworth's Intellectual System, Andover, 1838, 2 vols. 8vo, Vol. II. p. 135, et seq. If any one denies the trustworthiness of the human faculties there can be no argument with him; the axioms of morals and of mathematics are alike nonsense to such a reasoner. Demonstration presupposes something so certain it requires no demonstrating. So Reasoning presupposes the trustworthiness of Reason.
